|
|
Article: America's first cocaine epidemic. (history of cocaine use)
- Article from:
- St. Louis Journalism Review
- Article date:
- February 1, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1994 SJR St. Louis Journalism Review. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
Cocaine: It's as seductive as it is destructive. And, for more than a century, Americans have alternately embraced and rejected the substance known at various times as bouncing powder, candy, star dust and snow.
Every U.S. president since Richard Nixon has declared war on drugs. While the crisis is far from over.
But this epidemic is not the nation's first dalliance with cocaine. Dr. David Musto, a professor of psychiatry and the history of medicine at the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Conn., calls the period from the 1880s to the 1920s America's first great cocaine epidemic. That epidemic had three phases, he says: "The introduction, as cocaine ...