THIS IS THE WORLD ON DRUGS

FORCES OF HABIT: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World, by David T.
Courtwright. Harvard University Press, 277 pp., $24.95.

A REVIEWER'S LIFE isn't all lying on the sofa reading novels and eating
bonbons.

True, I did polish off my Valentine's Day chocolates and "Forces of Habit"
simultaneously, in a reclining posture.

But I'm sitting up straight as I write this, virtuously sipping green tea.
You, perhaps, are lounging at the breakfast table, enjoying the day's first
cup of coffee.

Or maybe you've curled up after dinner with the paper on your knee, a brandy
in one hand and a cigar in the other.

You may even (God forbid) be puffing on a joint and laughing through your
nose, or cutting lines of cocaine along the columns, or resting your
hypodermic needle on the paper as you prepare a shot of heroin.

As a reader living in the New York metropolitan area, however, you're
unlikely to be chewing betel or qat, mild stimulants popular in India and
eastern Africa respectively, rather like lattes in Seattle. You're probably
not having a peyote vision either, or sipping a kava brew; these drugs
haven't spread beyond their homelands (the Mexican desert; the Pacific
islands) with anything like the force of tobacco, say, or chocolate.

Wherever people live, they find plants capable of altering moods or
consciousness when processed properly.

Some of these drugs, like tea, spread around the planet with barely a murmur
of disapproval. Others, such as opium and its sullen spawn, heroin, have
caused wars. Still others - qat, kava - seem to go nowhere much. Why?
"Forces of Habit" is historian David T. Courtwright's attempt to address
that question. He finds answers in the history of Europeans and their
descendants, as they brought new plants home from their voyages of
exploration and introduced their own mind-altering favorites - particularly
alcohol - around the world, along with their political and economic agendas.

He calls the drug-sodden result "the psychoactive revolution." People
everywhere have acquired more and more potent means of altering their
ordinary waking consciousness, he explains.

This revolution, which he calls one of the signal events of world history,
"had its roots in the transoceanic commerce and empire building of the early
modern period - that is, the years from about 1500 to 1789. 'Forces of
Habit' describes how early modern merchants, planters and other imperial
elites succeeded in bringing about the confluence of the world's
psychoactive resources and then explores why, despite enormous profits and
tax revenues, their successors changed their minds and restricted or
prohibited many - but not all - drugs." Like Karl Marx and Agatha Christie
before him, Courtwright follows the money.

Drugs are "the opposite of durable goods": They vanish in a puff of smoke,
leaving the user scrambling for the next dose. This makes them extremely
valuable consumer goods, for manufacturers, distributors and governments as
well - drug taxes have historically made up a large percentage of government
resources.

By 1885, for example, taxes on alcohol, tobacco and tea accounted for close
to half of the British government's gross income.

The Opium Wars in China and the American Revolution - remember the Boston
Tea Party? - were both sparked at least in part by Britain's hunger for drug
tariffs.

But drugs aren't merely consumables like soap or beans, with a built-in
limit to their appeal.

Although soap manufacturers may cajole their customers to lather up more
often and more lavishly, a bather can only use so much soap.

Users of addictive drugs, however, build up a tolerance; they need more and
more of the stuff to achieve the same effect.

Related to this rhythm of increased use, argues Courtwright, is a similar
arms race, this one technological. Popular drugs begin life relatively mild,
as components of wild plants: coca leaves, poppy seeds. But new techniques
of purifying the active ingredients and delivering them to the brain bump
the drugs into a whole new category. There's a world of difference between
the nicotine kick of harsh, slow-burning pipe tobacco and quick,
smooth-burning cigarettes, whose smoke can be held deep in the lungs.

As the active ingredient of the opium poppy was refined from edible seeds to
edible resin, then smoked resin, then morphine and eventually heroin,
snorted and then injected directly into the bloodstream, its effects
increased with similar drama. It may be hard to overdose on a poppy-seed
Danish, but heroin is another thing altogether.

The stories all sound similar: Alcohol progressed from mild beer and wine to
high-test distilled liquor; cocaine moved from coca leaves chewed raw for a
slight kick and relief from altitude sickness, to the crippling highs and
lows of crack.

Even coffee seems to be going through a similar transformation, the
popularity of quadruple espressos and soft drinks spiked with pure caffeine
shows.

"If the single most important fact about the early modern world was the
expansion of oceangoing commerce, that of its modern successor was
industrialization. During the 19th century psychoactive discoveries and
innovations - the isolation of alkaloids, the invention of hypodermic
syringes and safety matches, the creation of synthetic and semisynthetic
drug - were married to new techniques of industrial production and
distribution. Factories did for drugs what canning did for vegetables. They
democratized them. It became easier, cheaper and faster for the masses to
saturate their brains with chemicals, making a lasting impression of their
most primitive pleasure and motivational systems." Among the most important
differences between licit and illicit drugs are their various abilities to
help or hinder workers. Coffee breaks make sense in the workplace, since
caffeine tends to sharpen the mind, while alcohol doesn't mix well with
heavy machinery or heavy thought (the proverbial whiskey bottle in the
reporter's bottom drawer notwithstanding). And technological improvements in
drug delivery have made a difference too. You can imagine an employer
pepping his workers with coca leaves, but cocaine in purer forms would take
too much of a toll on productivity.

Courtwright, a lively writer with an eye for entertaining details, sees the
drugs not just as examples of a pattern, but also as individuals. He traces
caffeine plants, for example, from their origins in three continents - tea
at the crossroads of India and China, coffee in Ethiopia, cacao in South
America and cola in West Africa. "Coffee and America grew up together," he
says, describing the cowboys' preference for hot, strong brews.
"Frontiersmen of a different sort, the Apollo 11 astronauts, were drinking
coffee three hours after landing on the moon. Theirs was history's first
extraplanetary drug use." My drug of choice, chocolate, was also a favorite
among Europe's decadent classes: "The obese Marquis de Sade was obsessed
with it in all its forms.

From prison he badgered his wife for ground chocolate, creme au chocolat,
chocolate pastilles and even cacao butter suppositories to soothe his
piles." This lively writing spices up a serious take on a grave subject.

While Courtwright sees licit substances like tea and illegal heavy-hitters
like cocaine as two ends of the same spectrum, he's by no means trying to
minimize the dangers of drugs.

Rather, he wants to lay out the history clearly - perhaps partly hoping that
if policy setters understand how drug use spread so widely and deeply,
they'll be better equipped to fight it.

And kava, betel, peyote, qat? "They missed, so to speak, the historical
window of opportunity, open from the late 15th through 19th centuries, but
since closing rapidly." If a psychoactive plant did not achieve global
cultivation and use by the end of the 20th century - perhaps it doesn't
travel well, like betel, or is hard to cultivate, like peyote - it may well
have missed its chance, says Courtwright. New synthetic drugs, he expects,
will out-compete the mild, plant-based highs, and may well give even the
high-test ones a run for their money.