Cocaine: The Great White Plague

This authoritative study by a professor of anesthesiology at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons characterizes cocaine as the most dangerous of addictive drugs and a serious threat to social and economic stability worldwide. Tracing the history of cocaine use in Europe and America from the 19th century, Nahas faults Freud's advocacy of the drug as a therapeutic agent and cautions modern partisans who urge it as a recreational drug, demonstrating that addiction causes potentially irreversible impairment of brain neurotransmission. Relating his trip to Peru with explorer/filmmaker Cousteau, the author also amply proves the difficulties in ending drug traffic. (Nov.)