We Sell Drugs: The Alchemy of US Empire

by Suzanna Reiss

  Significantly, the commodity form was directly linked to legitimacy. Then and now virtually all coca leaves (legally) exported from the Andes were imported by US manufacturers. At the time Anslinger was presenting these arguments, the two pharmaceutical houses, Merck and Maywood Chemical Works, that held exclusive government licenses to import coca leaves, were both conducting research on the leaf’s active properties, reworking its form, parsing its constituent elements, and repackaging them in other states, or as elements of different commodities, before making them available for consumption. This process, in part, embodied the “alchemy of empire.” The raw material coca leaf was to be cultivated exclusively as an input into a North American manufacturing process; coca was to be transformed, derivatives extracted, and new products synthesized in laboratories, before it could become a legitimate commodity. The commodity itself then was presented as the triumphant output of US ingenuity—rather than as the product of the international network of labor and raw material from which it was derived.

  The logic of control attached to the commodity form, worked to the advantage of US economic power, and was bolstered and depended on Western scientific authority. This further explains the urgency of the Commissioner of Narcotics to stop the Navy research project: it threatened to give the imprimatur of the most sophisticated scientific laboratories to the age-old practice of coca leaf chewing. The lead researcher on the project, Dr. Schwab, explained to Anslinger that “Merck Co.,” his supplier of coca leaves, had forewarned him that FBN objections might arise. “It was for this reason” that the study was carefully designed to be “an essential pharmacological investigation . . . using this drug as a means of ascertaining information and data in the general study of fatigue.” Dr. Schwab presented the raw material as a pharmacological input rather than the object of study itself. Drawing attention to the advanced technical equipment available to his lab, in contrast to the “apparatus available” to the UN researchers in the Andes, he suggested his work might have widespread scientific value, could be kept confidential if necessary, and wrote in bold underline to emphasize there was “no intention at any time“ to introduce coca leaves “into this country as a remedy for fatigue.”5 Despite this effort at reassurance, it was the very potential for scientific success that threatened to undermine drug control tenets. Anslinger urged the doctor to reconsider; affirming his belief in the research project’s limited intent, he emphasized the difficulty in keeping “such work confidential,” and argued “the natural consequence” of scientific study into the fatigue-relieving power of the leaf would “stimulate others to a practical application of the proved thesis.”

  While elaborating the potential unintended consequences of such research, Anslinger’s argument exemplified how scientific authority was influencing the legal parameters of the drug control regime’s effective domain. While claiming “I deeply respect the importance of fostering rather than deterring scientific research,” Anslinger went on to say: “I am fearful of an attempt being made to expand a scientific use such as you have in mind into a so-called legitimate use which is neither medical nor scientific, and which can not fail to prejudice the proposed International Agreement to limit the production of these leaves to medical and scientific purposes only.”

  The boundaries of legitimacy within narcotics control were defined by assessments of a substance’s “medical and scientific” value, even as the FBN sought to limit scientific research that might produce outcomes contrary to its own drug control goals. Coca leaves, according to the parameters of narcotics control, only gained medical and scientific value after being transformed into other substances. The dangers within the leaf could only be contained in this way—a proposition that was tied both to the commodity form and, more specifically, to an effort to channel the leaf’s potent alkaloidal content toward specific, controlled ends. What made coca leaves definitively illegitimate consumer items was the “strong probability that the chewing of these coca leaves, containing cocaine, has a potentiality for the establishment of addiction and possibly other deleterious effects.”6 Alchemical power here was twofold. First, the chemical laboratory exercised the exclusive power to render dangerous raw material legitimate. Secondly, in a circular fashion, the laboratory itself characterized coca leaves as vehicles for delivering the alkaloid cocaine, defined the drugs’ promise and peril (cocaine being “addictive”), and galvanized the system of control accordingly.

  The scientific logic emerging from laboratories informed narcotic control efforts as regulators invoked the cocaine content of coca leaves to label them unsafe for indigenous consumption in the Andes. This was evident when the UN commission concluded, “the effects produced by coca leaf chewing are to be explained by the action of cocaine.”7 This equation of coca leaf with cocaine became common practice among drug control advocates. The substances valued, parsed, extracted, and synthesized from the coca leaf in the laboratories of industrial countries were imported back into the Andes not only as legitimate consumer goods, but as evidence of the dangers and need for control over the nonsynthetic. At the same time, the power of the laboratory to extract the alkaloid cocaine and channel the substance into “legitimate” medical and scientific channels also meant that the by-product from which the cocaine had been extracted was now safe once again to be synthesized into still other legitimate commodities: the most famous of which was, of course, Coca-Cola. Before returning to the outcome of the Navy research effort, it is worth considering for a moment the other synthetic futures extracted from the coca leaf. In contrast to the hypervisibility of cocaine (even when hidden in miniscule quantities within a leaf), the afterlife of various other alkaloids, vitamins, and flavor-rich substances that together constituted the original coca leaf disappeared from the regulatory landscape and from the public record for researchers probing the archive.

  It is striking that at the very moment the United States was leading efforts to consolidate the drug control regime around controlling raw material, the largest single licit consumer of coca leaves at that time, the Coca-Cola Company, fell off the drug control radar. Coca-Cola, unlike raw coca leaves, was a legitimate and even desirable source of energy, and during and after World War II it underwent a massive global expansion, fueling the need for ever greater quantities of raw material for the production of its famously guarded formula. And yet, despite two decades of Coca-Cola’s “special leaves” being granted legal exemption for not qualifying as any “medical and scientific use” in international narcotics law, the UN board overseeing the international trade in narcotics reported: “Since 1947, no coca leaves have been used in the United States of America for the preparation of non-narcotic coca-flavoured beverages.”8 Perhaps the alchemy of empire made this technically true—Coca-Cola did not use coca leaves, but rather substances extracted from the leaves in a laboratory. When the Office of the United States High Commissioner in Germany heard such reports, he wrote to FBN Commissioner Anslinger, asking how Coca-Cola was now obtaining its flavoring extract. Apparently French and German resentment over the company’s “aggressive advertising campaigns” was fueling talk that their governments might import coca leaves to manufacture “similar beverages themselves.”9 Anslinger urged the officer to “discourage” such imports on narcotics enforcement grounds, emphasized the many failed attempts of competitors to reproduce Coke’s process in any case, and explained the absence of “special leaves” from UN tallies as follows: “[I]t should not be overlooked that flavoring extracts are also produced from the leaves imported for the manufacture of cocaine. In the cocaine extraction process the liquids bearing the alkaloids are separated at a very early stage from the waxes which contain the flavors and each then goes its own way to completion.”10

  Two categories of legitimate uses for coca leaves technically existed in international law: the use of coca leaves for medicinal and scientific purposes and for the production of a nonnarcotic flavoring extract. These categories of legitimacy would persist and would later be consecrated
in the landmark 1961 Single Drug Convention. It was an important and revealing transformation in the public administration of narcotics control, however, when in the aftermath of World War II the only “legitimate” nonmedical use of coca leaves (Coca-Cola’s flavoring extract) disappeared from the official record. Since the 1931 Geneva Convention, “special leaves” had international legal provision to be used in the manufacturing of a flavoring extract. Under the convention all such leaves had to be reported and verification provided by the FBN that all the resultant active alkaloids had been destroyed under government supervision. However, during and after the war this destruction stopped and all active alkaloids were reprocessed by pharmaceutical manufacturers for scientific and medical use—or relayed to warehouses where they filled a category of narcotics accumulation exempt from the oversight of international drug control: national security stockpiles. Once this occurred, in terms of legal reporting requirements the flavoring extract was strictly a by-product of drug production, left over from leaves that might be accounted for as imported entirely for scientific and medical use. The FBN no longer reported “special leaves” to the United Nations since they were accounted for within the tally of “medicinal” importations.11 Thus, with unintended irony, the production of Coca-Cola’s coca leaf–based flavoring extract largely disappeared from international regulatory oversight because it was now primarily derived from coca leaves imported for the manufacture of cocaine.

  Coca leaf flavoring extract going “on its own way to completion,” out of the international regulatory gaze, had a number of important ramifications for narcotics control and for US government and corporate power. Initially the vice president of Coca-Cola worried this absence of tracking might eventually push them out of the legitimate market altogether. He wrote to the FBN, wondering if it would be better to report imports anyway. “My reason for this suggestion is that it would seem advisable to avoid such apparent non-use of the statutory provisions regarding ‘Special’ leaves as might cause them gradually to fall into an atrophied or inoperative status.” Anslinger successfully reassured the company’s vice president that there was nothing to fear and that reporting on “special leaves” might make it seem as if the United States was actually concealing medicinal production from international scrutiny.12 This was no small worry in a context where synthetic drugs were increasingly replacing cocaine in common medical practice, narrowing even further the domain of legitimacy. Soon thereafter, Coca-Cola began capitalizing on this absence of public scrutiny to conceal its involvement in the coca leaf trade.

  The shift also had an immediate impact on the pharmaceutical industry. Merck & Co., Inc. stopped importing leaves destined exclusively for cocaine production, ceding the process entirely to Maywood Chemical Works, Coca-Cola’s supplier.13 Furthermore, Coca-Cola’s strong market growth across the decade and beyond helped ensure that the United States remained the largest manufacturer of licit cocaine in the world.14 In the realm of policing the illicit, the consequences were equally profound. The shift effectively eliminated recognition of any legal market for coca leaves outside the chemical laboratories of industrial powers. And so UN officials tracking the narcotics trade could advocate for stricter raw material controls, providing the following as evidence: “The use of coca leaves for medical purposes, namely for the licit manufacture of cocaine, absorbed only a fraction of the output . . . the balance . . . was consumed for non-medical purposes—that is to say, was chewed by certain indigenous peoples of South America.”15 The only reported “licit” manufacture was pharmaceutical cocaine production, and the only recognized illicit, “nonmedical” purpose was Andean coca leaf chewing. Coca-Cola’s nonmedical use of coca leaves no longer provided a public caveat to regulators’ insistence on “medical and scientific” value, as the company’s utilization of the leaves disappeared from FBN and UN annual reports, narrowing the visible landscape of “legitimate” uses of the coca leaf and making it easier for the Commissioner of Narcotics to make his case to the Navy for limiting their research into coca leaf chewing’s fatigue-relieving potential.16

  Dr. Schwab envisioned that his work might “settle for once and for all the mechanism of the reduction of the sensation of fatigue from coca leaves,” and, by doing so, advance “fundamental knowledge of this substance.”17 And Anslinger quickly countered by invoking the potential regulatory nightmare such scientific research might provoke, potentially lending credence to claims emanating from the Andes that coca leaves were legitimate items of consumption in their natural state. For Anslinger the very potency of the leaf necessitated a strict system of control. Despite FBN concern, questions of national security influenced priorities within the realm of drug research and development, and it was for this reason that the Office of Naval Research won a rare triumph over Commissioner Anslinger’s objections to research on coca leaf in its unreworked states. “By direction of the Chief of Naval Research,” Anslinger was informed of the research project’s relevance to the country’s national security: “I am sure you are aware of the real interest of the military establishment in problems of fatigue,” Commander J.W. Macmillan wrote to Commissioner Anslinger. He went on to explain, “It is our belief that only through such programs can advances in naval power and national security be ultimately achieved.” Macmillan concluded with a lofty vision to bolster the coca leaf study: “I am sure all of us are interested in the continuation of freedom for our scientists in their efforts to further our understanding of the human organism.”18

  Anslinger seems to have successfully forestalled the investigation until after the UN commission published its report in May 1950, preventing the diplomatic fallout he had feared. It was not until October 1951 that Anslinger personally submitted an order for the coca leaves to Maywood Chemical Works on behalf of scientists conducting “research on fatigue among Air Corps pilots [who need] these leaves for that purpose.”19 It is worth pointing out that while the research scientists had initially placed their order for leaves with Merck, by 1951, perhaps reflecting the industry shift in production which accompanied the shift in regulatory reporting, Anslinger turned to Maywood, Coca-Cola’s supplier, to provide the experimental stocks.

  The military’s ultimate triumph over Anslinger’s objections in this case was an exceptional instance, resting on invocations of military necessity, “national security,” and scientific freedom. Most research in this field being conducted in the United States at the time involved the ingestion of the cocaine alkaloid extracted from coca leaves, or experiments with synthetic substitutes manufactured entirely in laboratories. Far from focusing on the qualities of the raw material in its natural state, American scientists and doctors, military personnel, company boardrooms, and even the mainstream media looked to the wonders of new drug development and experimentation for the capacity to advance American economic and political might, societal health, and medical knowledge. And this, unlike the Navy’s interest in keeping Air Corps pilots awake by chewing coca leaves, conformed completely to the strictures of international drug control within which North American manufacturers were primary transformers of raw materials into legitimate drug commodities for the national and world market.

  DEVELOPING “WONDER DRUGS”

  Cocaine’s important status within the drug regulatory regime was connected to its relatively early synthesis and revolutionary role in medicine. Tests involving coca leaves, cocaine, or synthetic substitutes in this regard were emblematic of the landscape of drug development at mid-century where a whole array of “wonder drugs,” including primarily antibiotics, vitamins, painkillers, and stimulants, promised a veritable therapeutic revolution. The introduction of cocaine into medical practice in the late nineteenth century had transformed surgery, being used very effectively as a local anesthetic. While the US Navy had been interested in the stimulating properties of the coca leaf, the cocaine alkaloid extracted from the leaf was most commonly used not as a stimulant but rather as a painkiller. Anesthesia has always been a hazardous aspect of We
stern surgical practice, liable to produce toxic reactions resulting in death. This toxicity—primarily tied to the dosage given and the variability of human reactions to it—sparked much research into finding less toxic substances. While cocaine continues to be “used as a topical anesthetic by ear-nose-and-throat surgeons,” numerous other synthetically manufactured drugs based on cocaine—drugs such as procaine (also called novocaine), lidocaine, prilocaine, and others—have also found their place in Western medical practice. Some laboratory-manufactured painkilling drugs, such as novocaine, continue to be widely used. Others, such as cinchocaine and bupivacaine, were discarded after discovery of their “considerable level of toxicity.”20

  All of these failures and successes were part and parcel of the methods deployed for the “advancement” of Western medicine. In the 1940s the promise such synthetic substitute drugs offered was great, spanning policing, economic, diplomatic, and medical worlds. Limiting US dependence on raw materials promised to eliminate what William McAllister characterizes as the drug control regime’s “excess production dilemma,” the overproduction of raw materials that might slip into illicit channels.21 The Chief of the Addiction-Producing Drugs Section of the World Health Organization (WHO) articulated this sentiment: “Many believe that, from the viewpoint of the efficiency of control, it would even be better to be, for legitimate medical purposes, not dependent on substances manufactured from agricultural products, provided, of course . . . drugs of purely synthetic origin, are at least as good.”22 Limiting the flow of raw material also had the potential to increase US economic and diplomatic leverage if it dominated the production of synthetics. The power of synthetic drug alternatives was evident from the circumstances of their genesis: Allied World War II embargoes that propelled German chemical innovations to overcome raw material shortages. The first generation of synthetic narcotics, hailed as harbingers of a “drug revolution,” were all “discovered in Germany during the war.”23 US observers believed that synthetic drugs might reduce dependence on foreign imports while also reducing manufacturing costs. In the war’s aftermath, “old sources of supply” had opened up again, but as Business Week reported, “labor costs for collecting the plants are higher now. So the trend is definitely toward replacing imported botanicals with US-made synthetics. Manufacturers can often produce these synthetics more cheaply than they can import the plants.”24 And finally, as embodiments of the technological wonders of scientific research and capital investment, laboratory-synthesized drugs seemed to offer a limitless potential of yet to be discovered benefits.