When Cocaine Was Legal

June 15, 2007 1:30 AM

When Cocaine Was Legal (pic) Wikipedia: In 1885 the U.S. manufacturer Parke-Davis sold cocaine in various forms, including cigarettes, powder, and even a cocaine mixture that could be injected directly into the user’s veins with the included needle. The company promised that its cocaine products would “supply the place of food, make the coward brave, the silent eloquent and ... render the sufferer insensitive to pain.”
posted by m2002 (11 comments total)

That's a pretty funny picture!

(overall, though, a single pic & a link to wikipedia? not the strongest framing, but i see yr a noob, so don't wanna jump on you. the illegal-drugs-were-once-legal issue has all kinds of weird & wonderful surpises, especially in the patent medicine sector. in non-patent terms, i recall once finding some very out of date morphine tablets in my grandmother's medicine cabinet (don't ask) - they were an over-the-counter remedy for a runny bum)
posted by UbuRoivas at 1:39 AM on June 15, 2007

I keep meaning to rent the DVD of this great novel from Netflix, but I keep forgetting. The book had lots of nice background about cocaine usage in that general time.
posted by RavinDave at 1:42 AM on June 15, 2007

It's a heck of a drug.
posted by pruner at 1:46 AM on June 15, 2007 [1 favorite]

make... the silent eloquent

Just unsilent. Very few become eloquent. Nothing worse than one of those silent types with an eightball.

For Sale by All Druggists

Ah the good old days. When the government was off my back as the Founders intended it.
posted by three blind mice at 1:57 AM on June 15, 2007

You ever pulled two all-nighters in a row with gallons of coffee as fuel? You go through these stages: anxious, blissfully engaged, mildy hallucinatory, lost in the flow, giddy, etc. And at the 49th hour everything catches up with you, leaving every nerve in your body frayed and hateful and exhausted, but still hopelessly alert so that you can't rest or relax or even think? Every time I've tried coke I've ended up at the 49th hour without the productivity of the preceding 48. I hate that shit.

Getting coked up at the dentists' office? That would be my very special little circle of Hell.
posted by maryh at 2:09 AM on June 15, 2007

For Sale by All Druggists

Ah the good old days.

Yeh, but did you see the price? Fifteen fucking cents!

In those days, you could buy a gramophone for less than that, and still have change left over for a dozen horses.
posted by UbuRoivas at 2:29 AM on June 15, 2007 [1 favorite]

pedant mode on: Cocaine is still legal -- if you can find someone who is prepared to write a prescription for it.

There's an article by two doctors at one of my local hospitals titled 'Fifty-five years of cocaine dependence', which describes an eighty-odd year old woman who was first prescribed cocaine in the thirties for an injury to her nose, and who had managed to persuade various doctors to supply her with an atomized spray of cocaine that she used as an inhaler for the next fifty odd years or so.

I can't find a copy of the article online, but if anyone has access to Medline or some such, the authors are Brown and Middlefell and I believe it was published in the British Journal of Addiction.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 2:56 AM on June 15, 2007

What I want to know is who was the first person to stop and think "Hmmm, how we do make this stuff stronger?
posted by squidfartz at 3:55 AM on June 15, 2007

Fucking shit post.

But man, I miss cocaine something fierce sometimes.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:50 AM on June 15, 2007 [1 favorite]

Of course if you were a Pope or Queen of England, you needed something a little more elegant, such as Vin Mariani.
posted by TedW at 5:41 AM on June 15, 2007

to make this post better, why not add a link to this 45 minute special from the history channel, or maybe a link to several images, instead of just one.
posted by timory at 6:25 AM on June 15, 2007