ADVENTUROUS LOOK AT WORLD OF 'COCAINE'

It's going on 4:30 p.m., and the alkaloid has just begun to bite.

With an opening line like that, one might expect to be reading Hunter S.
Thompson's latest memoirs. Not quite. What we have instead is author
Dominic Streatfeild beginning his sweeping survey of cocaine by describing
the experience of lying in a hammock in Peru and chewing a coca leaf in the
fashion of the natives. Far less experienced with personal pharmacology
than Thompson (Streatfeild claims to have never tried actual cocaine) and
despite deficiencies in style and tone, he has nonetheless taken on a vast,
complex topic and met the challenge admirably.

So what's so special about cocaine? It is not exaggerating to say that
there are all the other drugs - and then there is cocaine. Cocaine is the
most addictive drug known to science. Given an unlimited supply of heroin,
laboratory rats will eventually regulate their intake of the drug. Given
the same access to cocaine, rats will eschew food, water and anything other
than the drug. They will do nothing but consume cocaine until they die -
usually within a week. No other drug (and few other commodities) compares
to cocaine as a worldwide economic force. And the violence generated by
battles over the control of cocaine, especially in South America, is
unequalled in its brutality.

Streatfeild covers a lot of ground - from coca cultivation by the Inca
empire to the first cocaine epidemic at the turn of the 20th century to the
freebase and crack explosions of the '70s and '80s to the Medellin and Cali
drug cartels. The depth and breadth of his research is evident. Not only
has he read extensively on the topic, but he interviews a colorful
assortment of historians, botanists, chemists, DEA agents and drug dealers.
He even dines with notorious Colombian kingpins of the Ochoa family, an
excursion for which his life- insurance company refused to provide
coverage. It seems as if any corner of the world that was touched by
cocaine, no matter how remote, Streatfeild paid a visit to inspect the place.

While he has written travel books and produced TV documentaries,
Streatfeild has never tackled anything of this scope before, and a lack of
maturity in his writing style threatens to undermine the credibility of his
work. He lapses into self-referential asides, narrating the process of
researching the story as he's telling it. He is an excellent storyteller
when he sticks to the story. But I don't care how slowly the clock ticks in
the British Library or whether the proselytizing of a born-again Bolivian
inmate made him uncomfortable. I realize that this is an intentional,
postmodern approach - an attempt to deflate the seriousness of his tome by
adopting a flip, ironic tone. But all it accomplishes is to make himself
sound like a brat, which is unfortunate, because he winds up deflecting
attention from his excellent research.

Streatfeild is also a bit overly credulous at times. He gives an
unconvincing defense of Gary Webb's discredited series in the San Jose
Mercury News about the CIA and the crack-cocaine epidemic; he believes that
a fungus is being sprayed by helicopters on coca plantations with little
supporting evidence beyond the existence of the fungus; and he allows the
Ochoas and the FARC guerrillas to spin him just enough to temper his
assessment of them.

Despite these flaws, this book is a great read. Streatfeild gets what the
story of cocaine is about - how our hubris is exposed by a drug that is so
pleasurable and that generates so much cash, we cannot control ourselves in
its presence. This is a tale that is at times absurd, amusing, disturbing,
and most of all, it is a story of extremes. Whether viewed sociologically
as a cultural phenomenon or economically as a powerhouse among global
commodities, there is nothing small or even moderate about cocaine. That
Streatfeild has managed to contain such a monster between the covers of his
book is an achievement in itself.

(SIDEBAR)

"Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography"

By Dominic Streatfeild Thomas Dunne Books, $27.95