As an aside to LP's excellent articles on Columbia, the 3rd of which mentioned the inclusion of cocaine in Coca-Cola earlier this century. A few thoughts about Coca-Cola and the invisible hand. It is well known that after cocaine was removed from the formula for Coca-Cola the company continued to purchase raw Coca leaf in huge quantities and is still the single largest legal buyer in the world. The reason given is that they still use other extracts of the plant for "flavouring" the drink. Two issues come of out of this: 1. What are these substances? Coca-Cola say they are a trade secret. It is said that just three people know the precise formula/process. Only the US parent company makes up the concentrate of the drink which is then distributed under high security to all bottling/canning franchises world-wide. (Just add water!) In any associated set of plant alkaloids from which active drug compounds are derived there are other substances of similar chemistry. Often these are of different potency but have a similar or related action. My feeling is that they would not use the stuff unless it was addictive enough to be worthwhile. When you think about it, to the uneducated palette Coca-Cola does not taste very nice, (fizzy, soapy water with sugar?). It is an acquired taste. Mind you, once you have acquired the taste..... Ever met "Coke" addicts? - I have. My intuition (nasty suspicious leftwing socialist mind) tells me that in addition to kola (which is high in caffeine) and "flavours" there are some cocaine related substances that although not as potent are very commercially useful in creating and sustaining the Coke drinking habit. Come to think of it ... what are "flavourings"? Are they nuroactive compounds that stimulate the taste and smell receptors of the CNS? Do certain flavours become things of habit? Do we get conditioned to certain "flavours"? Tobacco companies put "flavourings" like chocolate in cigarettes to create brand loyalty. Chocolate is another nuroactive substance which mimics some of the nurochemistry of the human sexual orgasm. 2. What do Coca-Cola do with the (now unwanted) cocaine, which has to be extracted from the leaf and separated from the "flavourings"? Since modern drugs have been invented to replace it in clinical use the legitimate world market for pure pharmaceutical grade cocaine is very small (a few kilos per year). It is used in some research activities for calibrating other synthetic compounds and surgically for a few people who have allergies to the synthetics. So we have the dubious prospect that we could choose to believe what Coca-Cola say they do about this. Coca-Cola say that they "destroy it". Is that plausible? Has capitalism ever been able to resist such stupendous profits? Would the surplus (destroyed) Cocaine be worth a significant percentage of Coca-Cola sales world-wide, or as much, or much more? I also wonder about the role of Coca-Cola in the supply and demand regime for the leaf during this century. They may be more pivotal than we can appreciate but it goes deeper than one company. After all, who would have thought that the CIA was so closely connected to all the global drug trades. Churning a countries politics though manipulating the drug trade is one thing. Interdicting drugs is another thing, making a mess of a control program is another, criminal corruption or even high political corruption is another. Right wing elements directing drugs into radical politicised communities is another but control of the thing... now there is a thought. >From an unprincipled capitalist geopolitical point of view, it is much better to control it or at least be the biggest player whilst being perceived to be struggling with it. We are not just talking megabucks we are talking gigabucks. Surely this is the equivalent of Dark Matter in astronomy. This is the source of dark money. This is the invisible hand of the "free market". A few books on related issues. Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press; Alexander Cockburn, et al Dark Alliance : The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion; Gary Webb Cocaine Politics : Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America Peter Dale Scott, Jonathan Marshall The Politics of Heroin : CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade; Alfred W. McCoy Tim Murphy Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
