The substances most commonly used in this process are sugars, such as lactose, inositol, and mannitol, and local anesthetics, such as lidocaine. Cocaine base is converted into the powder form, which is usually cocaine hydrochloride, by diluting it with other substances. Illicit cocaine is usually distributed as a white crystalline powder or as an off-white chunky material. Tragically, cocaine continues in use as a highly addictive and destructive street drug, an inadvertent contribution by medicine to the contemporary drug culture. Safer anesthetics were developed in the 20th century and cocaine fell into disuse in medicine as a pain blocker. Soon thereafter the addictiveness of cocaine was discovered. It was first employed as a spinal anesthetic in 1898 by the German surgeon August Bier. Halstead (1852-1922) had injected cocaine into nerve trunks and showed it numbed feeling, cocaine came into use as an anesthetic agent. Coke: Street name for cocaine, the most potent stimulant of natural origin, a bitter addictive anesthetic ( pain blocker) which is extracted from the leaves of the coca scrub (Erythroxylon coca) indigenous to the Andean highlands of South America.įrom the name of the plant came the name cocaine and its street name coke (and Coke as in Coca Cola, which once contained it).
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