Once considered a harmless source of pleasure and therapeutic benefit, today the drug cocaine is vilified as the cause of great misery and suffering for many who have succumbed to its euphoric effects. Yet, by nearly all acounts, cocaine is here to stay, despite the billions of dollars that government agencies around the world spend each year to eliminate it.

From the streets of cities as large as Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago, to small rural towns, Americans consume more cocaine than does any other citizenry in the world. An estimated 80 percent of all South American cocaine — approximately one thousand tons annually — finds its way to America’s consumers. The size of the market for cocaine is staggering by any measure. An estimated 40 million Americans admit to having tried cocaine, either in powdered form or as crack. Moreover, between 2 and 4 million people admit to regular use of or addiction to cocaine. Faced with such numbers, American political and spiritual leaders have labeled cocaine use an epidemic.

Cocaine use swept across America during the 1970s, glamorized by rock stars, Hollywood personalities, and heroes of professional sports. Their widely publicized use of the drug brought it to the attention of many Americans for the first time and gave it unprecedented status. More and more Americans began to explore the drug’s euphoric effects, but cocaine’s dark side began to emerge after a decade of use by people who first saw it as a fun and harmless drug. Addiction rates among young people and deaths from overdoses began to make headlines in newspapers and television news programs across the nation.

By the mid-1980s, what was already an epidemic was termed a crisis as a new, cheap form of cocaine called “crack” appeared on the streets. The low cost of crack made it the drug of choice among America’s inner-city poor. Street gangs warred over the control of the sale and distribution of crack. This violence, on top of the crime committed by addicts to support their habits and hundreds of fatal overdoses annually, added to the misery and hopelessness of life in urban ghettos. This desperate situation became worse when hospitals began reporting an apparent increase in the number of babies born to crack-addicted mothers. These babies, who seem to share their mothers’ addiction, were dubbed “crack babies” by the media.

A Costly Scourge

In addition to the human cost, the cocaine epidemic demands enormous amounts of money. Annually Americans are consuming roughly one thousand tons of cocaine at an estimated street cost of $90 billion — half of the value of all of America’s agricultural products combined. On top of the amount of money spent purchasing cocaine, enormous sums of tax money are spent confiscating cocaine, prosecuting and incarcerating traffickers, and helping addicts to overcome their drug habits.

How much the cocaine and crack epidemic costs taxpayers is difficult to estimate because of the numbers of people involved, but some of that cost is clear enough. The U.S. government annually spends $2 billion in foreign aid to cocaine-producing countries to help them eliminate the drug at its source. In addition, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has an annual budget of $19 billion to intercept illegal drugs — cocaine among them — before they enter the country. Therapy for cocaine and crack addicts costs the taxpayers another $3 billion per year. On top of these known amounts are unknown sums spent by many branches of the military and local law enforcement agencies to intercept, arrest, prosecute, and incarcerate cocaine and crack traffickers and users.

Despite the costs, America’s appetite for cocaine in its various forms seems insatiable. Political and civic leaders have organized to try to free America from the grip of the cocaine epidemic, but are divided on how best to do this. One faction proposes that America support a war on the coca fields in South America on the assumption that by destroying them, the supply of cocaine will dry up. Another faction proposes that America can stop cocaine trafficking only by providing more money for law enforcement, health practitioners, and social service workers to deal with the demand for the drug at home.

Neither of these two approaches has won the war on cocaine, however. Although use of cocaine in powder form has declined since 1985, crack use has increased. Both drugs, moreover, remain a major health and social problem and both continue to thrive on the streets of America regardless of the billions of dollars annually spent trying to stamp them out.

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