Rating: 
Summary: It Is Not A Supply Issue
Review: "Cocaine; An Unauthorized Biography", by Dominic Streatfield should be read by anyone who holds public office, anyone who campaigns as a warrior against drugs, and anyone else that thinks the problem of the abuse of cocaine and its variants originates outside of The United States. Coca leaves have been in use for several thousand years, and they are still in use today. Whenever you drink a Coke from Coca Cola, Coca Leaves contribute to the taste. There is NO narcotic in the product; Coke has a subsidiary corporation in Chicago, Stepan Chemicals, which removes the cocaine from the leaves prior to their use in creating the drink. Remember the disaster that was "New Coke"? New Coke did not use the Coca Plant, the public hated it, and Classic Coke was brought back to market instantly, with the Coca leaves once again present.Streatfield went anywhere he needed to write this story, if that meant going to Columbia and meeting with some of the largest producers of the drug he did. He met with paramilitary groups that are fighting the Columbian Government, and he met with the smallest of producers. It is no exaggeration to say that he routinely went where is was somewhat likely he would not return. As you read the book you will gain the incredulous attitude that the author developed as he researched this book. For the reality is that Cocaine has flowed in to the United States and will continue to do so regardless of the money that is spent to prevent it. We share a nearly 2,000-mile border with Mexico whose government has been only too happy to assist in the transportation of the drug to the US. This country also has thousands of miles of seacoast that cannot possibly be watched. You will read of seizures of Cocaine that is measured in tons! These seizures have no effect on the drug trade. For confirmation on how fruitless the "war on drugs" has always been you need only to read the interviews with DEA Agents and a variety of other law enforcement officials. The issue of cocaine and the resources that are spent on it are absurd. The issue of drugs will get you votes if you run for office, and that is where the value of cocaine lies. A few numbers may help to illustrate how our elected officials waste billions of dollars every month. Between 40 and 50 BILLION dollars are spent per year to prevent the movement, use, etc, of illicit drugs. This does not include the money spent on the largest prison population on the planet and the cost of building new facilities. What does the US get from its 50 BILLION expenditure on drugs? There is zero income and the lives lost from all illicit drugs per year in the US are around 6,000 people. The biggest drug that kills in this country kills more than all of the following causes combined, car accidents, all illicit drugs, suicides, AIDS, homicides, and accidental gun deaths. This drug is of course tobacco. You can research the numbers yourself, but they will fall between 400,000 and 450,000 deaths per year. If the current rate of new smokers stays constant the young people under the age of 18 at present will contribute 6 MILLION more bodies to the death toll. Alcohol kills between 100,000 and 125,000 people per year. Car accidents kill about 1,000 people per week. Even though the Federal Tax on cigarettes has dropped from 31% per pack in 1960 to 11% in 2000, 6.3 billion dollars is collected. The states collect a comparable amount; I found that Maine expects 98 Million in revenue this year. Unfortunately The Fed pays out over 600% more for healthcare for smokers, some 38 Billion. But that type of fiscal incompetence is routine for Washington, and I have not even mentioned the massive amounts of dollars the tobacco companies pour in to the pockets of those running for office. What this book does is put illicit drugs in to perspective. There is clearly more harm done by Cocaine than just those who die from it. Law enforcement officials are killed, and one death cannot be justified in this "war". Whether it is Cocaine, Heroin, Crack, or a host of pharmaceutical drugs, if someone wants to use them they can get them. They always have, and they always will. So what has the public been protected from after hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent on this war?, little to zero. The men and women who have died during their service in this war gave their lives for what? The drugs that kill hundreds of thousands people every year are legal and they produce income from taxes. They are socially acceptable, and when given the blessing of legality are elevated above the satanic illegal drugs. When one person dies from an illicit drug lawmakers go berserk. When 75 die from cigarettes for each death from illicit drugs, what outrage takes place? None! Alcohol provides 20 bodies for a single drug death. Drunk drivers per year kill thousands. The numbers suggest 4-5 corpses from drunk driving for every illicit drug death. I cannot find the adjective to describe the CEO who testified before congress that, "cigarettes are as addictive as chocolate chip cookies". As long as the government and the people who vote them in to office tolerate this kind of theater of the absurd nothing will change. Cocaine is a problem because it has been vilified. The damage it does is negligible when compared to the drugs that kill on a genocidal scale yearly. I no more advocate the use of cocaine than I do tobacco. But when it comes to prioritizing the problems that cause tremendous damage to this country, cocaine is not going to be anywhere near the top of my list.
Rating:
Summary: Well worth the effort!!
Review: Dominic Streatfield presents us with a beautifully crafted and written piece of work. Even though this book contains nearly 500 pages, I suspect it could have numbered far more. Nevertheless, I appreciated his chronological presentation of the role *coca* played in pre-Columbian South America up to the contemporary use and abuse of *cocaine* by Americans and Brits alike (the author is in fact British!). And even though this book is non-fiction, the author's injection of his personality and experiences while researching the book were refreshing and comical. In short, a great read that can provide hours of conversation fodder!
Rating:
Summary: This book is funny, intelligent, and incredibly interesting
Review: I began reading this book by reading sections my friend suggested to read and immediately fell in love with it. Seeing that this book was easy to pick up and start reading from the middle, I was worried it would read like a history book, written chapter by chapter. However, going back and having read the entire book, this book flows well and is difficult to put down. It talks about everything from the Coca leaf use among the native South Americans in the 1500s, to their exploitation, to Coca's spread to the Western world as an anaesthesic medicine, and finally becoming the drug Cocaine and spreading from there to the vast world of the past few decades full of ridiculously wealthy drug traffickers. I have recommended this book to all my friends and I do the same for you.
Rating: 
Summary: Addictive Infotainment
Review: I keep trying, but I just can't put this book down! Seriously, this is fascinating stuff. If this were a novel (and it could, in a very postmodern sense, be read as such), cocaine would be the best character ever written.
Rating:
Summary: Fun, exciting, interesting read
Review: I picked this book up randomly at Heathrow Airport. I've been wanting to read that history of salt book and figured that this would be an okay second choice. I was wrong - it was an AMAZING choice. I could not put this book down. Fun facts, hilarious commentary, outstanding research, and true journalistic investigation. I hope that this book catches on... I've already promised my copy to 10 people. Are you the type of person who likes to learn new things and share them with others? Get this book. Do you like to read alternative accounts of history? Get this book. Do you like informative writing with a humorous bent? Get this book. I hope to read more by this author in the future.
Rating:
Summary: Exhaustive yet not exhausting
Review: If you ever wanted to know an extraordinary amount of detail about cocaine and then some, this is the book for you. Written by a documentary filmmaker, Streatfield's enormously thorough tome not only takes you across various geographies, but also through time. Starting with the Incan and Aztec uses of the coca leaf, Streatfield takes us on an incredible journey of a substance that leads us through to the Latin American domination of production while highlighting the U.S. consumerism of the product. The amount of detail in this book is staggering as Streatfield has spent a lot of time researching materials as well as tracking down individuals around the globe. Statistics are liberally used to drive home his points. For example, in the 1980's the Miami Federal Reserve Bank had an unexpected surplus of US $5.5 Billion. This was more than all of the other 11 Federal Reserve Banks combined. The book is full of statistics like this that demonstrate the scale of impact of cocaine. In addition to the facts and figures, we are introduced to some fascinating characters on this journey. We learn of Sigmund Freud's addiction to cocaine (there are some who believe that his great work would have not been possible without cocaine), the American distributor George Jung (popularized in the movie Blow), super narco-terrorist Pablo Escobar and his ilk and many others. Some characters are superfluous (i.e. Freud) but others are more central to machinations of the cocaine industry and their impact is thoroughly explored (i.e. George Jung, Carlos Ledher). If there is a con in the book, it is that some chapters are not labeled as properly as they could be. For example, the chapter where we are introduced to George Jung and his Colombian buddy ends with an extensive discussion about Colombia and Pablo Escobar. The chapter title leads us to believe none of that and probably could have been titled "George leads to Colombian dominance" or something like that. This would give the reader a better idea of what to expect in each chapter. If you are even the least bit curious about Cocaine, then this book is a must for you. Streatfield's writing style can be a bit whimsical at times but it provides just the right note of humor in a tome of documentary proportions and scope.
Rating:
Summary: Exhaustive yet not exhausting
Review: If you ever wanted to know an extraordinary amount of detail about cocaine and then some, this is the book for you. Written by a documentary filmmaker, Streatfield's enormously thorough tome not only takes you across various geographies, but also through time. Starting with the Incan and Aztec uses of the coca leaf, Streatfield takes us on an incredible journey of a substance that leads us through to the Latin American domination of production while highlighting the U.S. consumerism of the product. The amount of detail in this book is staggering as Streatfield has spent a lot of time researching materials as well as tracking down individuals around the globe. Statistics are liberally used to drive home his points. For example, in the 1980's the Miami Federal Reserve Bank had an unexpected surplus of US $5.5 Billion. This was more than all of the other 11 Federal Reserve Banks combined. The book is full of statistics like this that demonstrate the scale of impact of cocaine. In addition to the facts and figures, we are introduced to some fascinating characters on this journey. We learn of Sigmund Freud's addiction to cocaine (there are some who believe that his great work would have not been possible without cocaine), the American distributor George Jung (popularized in the movie Blow), super narco-terrorist Pablo Escobar and his ilk and many others. Some characters are superfluous (i.e. Freud) but others are more central to machinations of the cocaine industry and their impact is thoroughly explored (i.e. George Jung, Carlos Ledher). If there is a con in the book, it is that some chapters are not labeled as properly as they could be. For example, the chapter where we are introduced to George Jung and his Colombian buddy ends with an extensive discussion about Colombia and Pablo Escobar. The chapter title leads us to believe none of that and probably could have been titled "George leads to Colombian dominance" or something like that. This would give the reader a better idea of what to expect in each chapter. If you are even the least bit curious about Cocaine, then this book is a must for you. Streatfield's writing style can be a bit whimsical at times but it provides just the right note of humor in a tome of documentary proportions and scope.
Rating: 
Summary: If you like Cocaine, you'll love *Cocaine*
Review: Ok, so, basically, there's this really cool leaf in South America that natives have been chewing for medicinal and epicurean purposes since before the reign of the Incas. This leaf, if you believe Streatfeild, was largely responsible for maintaining a labor force to strip South America of its silver - miners would work days without hardly taking a break as long as they had their precious coca. Apparently, this leaf is relatively harmless in its natural form. When you chew it, you will get very small doses of several drugs, one of which provides the name for this book. Fast forward to present day. The natives are still chewing coca, but instead of mining silver, their harvesting their favorite leaf, converting it to a crude paste, and selling it to narco-traffickers who then make it into pure or almost pure cocaine. Of course, this is illegal, and the United States in particular has a bone to pick about the leaf (unless it's being used for one of its few legitimate purposes - such as flavoring coca-cola, which it is STILL used for, despite popular belief). But people want their cocaine. That's why we've got the drug war. Yes, the drug war is very very stupid. And Streatfield never misses an opportunity to drive this point home. Hard.
I like this book. It has a plethora of trivia that's actually worth knowing, and it provides a new context to several historical events. But I don't really like Dominic Streatfeild. I get the feeling that if I met him I'd have to constantly force myself to smile. Awkward. He's like a nerdy Sherlock Holmes. His plot development techniques get a bit formulaic. I got very tired of paragraphs beginning with questions such as "And then what happened?" followed by him answering his own question. It's a rather tedious method of moving the story along. But I do admire the courage he had to have had to go where he had to go - deep into the nexus of the cocaine industry. He even interviewed two of the most infamous narco-traffickers, the Ochoa Brothers. But once he got in those situations, he didn't really get to the big questions. I don't blame him, of course. I wouldn't feel comfortable accusing one of the world's most powerful criminals of murder or torture either. But it was a bit anti-climatic.
Worth reading.. The chapter on crack is particularly interesting.
Rating:
Summary: If you like Cocaine, you'll love *Cocaine*
Review: Ok, so, basically, there's this really cool leaf in South America that natives have been chewing for medicinal and epicurean purposes since before the reign of the Incas. This leaf, if you believe Streatfeild, was largely responsible for maintaining a labor force to strip South America of its silver - miners would work days without hardly taking a break as long as they had their precious coca. Apparently, this leaf is relatively harmless in its natural form. When you chew it, you will get very small doses of several drugs, one of which provides the name for this book. Fast forward to present day. The natives are still chewing coca, but instead of mining silver, their harvesting their favorite leaf, converting it to a crude paste, and selling it to narco-traffickers who then make it into pure or almost pure cocaine. Of course, this is illegal, and the United States in particular has a bone to pick about the leaf (unless it's being used for one of its few legitimate purposes - such as flavoring coca-cola, which it is STILL used for, despite popular belief). But people want their cocaine. That's why we've got the drug war. Yes, the drug war is very very stupid. And Streatfield never misses an opportunity to drive this point home. Hard.
I like this book. It has a plethora of trivia that's actually worth knowing, and it provides a new context to several historical events. But I don't really like Dominic Streatfeild. I get the feeling that if I met him I'd have to constantly force myself to smile. Awkward. He's like a nerdy Sherlock Holmes. His plot development techniques get a bit formulaic. I got very tired of paragraphs beginning with questions such as "And then what happened?" followed by him answering his own question. It's a rather tedious method of moving the story along. But I do admire the courage he had to have had to go where he had to go - deep into the nexus of the cocaine industry. He even interviewed two of the most infamous narco-traffickers, the Ochoa Brothers. But once he got in those situations, he didn't really get to the big questions. I don't blame him, of course. I wouldn't feel comfortable accusing one of the world's most powerful criminals of murder or torture either. But it was a bit anti-climatic.
Worth reading.. The chapter on crack is particularly interesting.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating and thorough
Review: Streatfield has written a very interesting account of the history of cocaine from its use in the Andes thousands of years ago to the present day. The book is full of information, stories, personal anecdotes, and legends all interwoven in a light-hearted and humourous style. He goes in depth into the impact of the drug trade on society and politics in a number of countries as well as providing a thorough review of how cocaine emerged on the European social scene in the late nineteenth century. He writes as a fascinated observer rather than as a historian - a style which takes a bit of getting used to but overall enhances the reader's enjoyment. You might not agree with all of Streatfield's opinions but it will give you a new perspective on the cocaine trade, its impact on America, and what can be done about it. The book is fascinating and an eye opener - worth picking up.
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