TWO-YEAR ODYSSEY ON THE POWER OF COKE

Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography. Dominic Streatfeild. Dunne. 528 Pages.
$27.95.

Perhaps the most sobering shot in Blow, the late Ted Demme's jumpy version
of the life of George Jung, the man behind a good deal of the coke sold in
the United States during the disco era, comes at the end of the film. After
watching pretty boy Johnny Depp play Jung for two hours, we're shown a
photo of the real McCoy, a ravaged old con with long stringy hair, a
mummified hippie brought out to scare off kids from drugs.

But in Dominic Streatfeild's Cocaine, we meet Jung again, and he seems
quite chipper for someone serving a 25-year sentence. This may be because
he packed in more adrenalin-coursing fun in his half-life out of jail than
the average guy could do if he had a turtle's longevity. And this is what
Streatfeild reminds us, a simple truth preachers and politicians would
prefer we forget: ''Cocaine is fun.'' Oracles of self-reliance pontificate
that all you need to kick a habit is to exercise will power, mind over
matter. But what if your mind is no longer your own? As Streatfeild says,
``Telling a coke addict not to take cocaine is like trying to train a dog
that has been badly beaten not to flinch when you raise your arm.''

To understand this immensely potent drug, Streatfeild embarked on a
two-year narco-odyssey that took him everywhere from the British Museum to
a South Bronx crack house. He visited several countries and interviewed a
gaggle of experts, including scientists, farmers, reporters, DEA agents, a
Colombian drug lord and Nobel-laureled economist Milton Friedman. He
describes how Incan society was dependent on the nutrient-rich coca leaves
used in sacred rituals and chewed with happy abandon. And after they
planted their flag, the Spanish became the first Judeo-Christian pushers
when they discovered that the natives would work themselves to death for a
steady supply of the stuff. At first, the Catholic Church was opposed,
decreeing the practice immoral. Ten percent of the action, however,
persuaded the church to withdraw its objection.

This is just one example of why white industrialized nations are on
slippery moral ground when lecturing their black, brown and yellow friends
about narcotics. Streatfeild notes that the British Empire was partly
subsidized from opium sales to Chinese. And let us not forget that
Coca-Cola, founded by an Atlanta morphine addict, for decades mixed coca
leaves with kola nuts to produce the world's top soft drink (now the leaves
are ''de-cocainized'' at a special plant in Chicago).

Before World War I, the largest distributor of cocaine wasn't in South
America; it was in the heart of Europe: Germany. And its chief proponent
was an Austrian physician named Sigmund Freud, whose enthusiasm for the
drug led a colleague to accuse him of unleashing the ''third scourge of
humanity,'' after opium and alcohol.

Streatfeild is no advocate of cocaine; he submits ample evidence of its
destructive nature. But he is highly skeptical of the so-called War on
Drugs, which he believes is fueled by an ugly alliance of cynical
legislators and sensationalistic media. A gonzo journalist who bristles at
the label, he alternates from unadorned, matter-of-fact reporting to a
sophomoric, gee-whiz tone that strains to ingratiate itself with the
reader, such as when Freud is called ``the guy whose early work was to
provide Keith Richards with more than a few good nights out.''

Had Streatfeild flushed the Hunter S. Thompson from his system, he would
have had a better book. As it is, Cocaine is a worthy primer to a global
problem that will be with us until the drug is legalized and regulated, or
we build enough jails to accommodate another million-plus minority kids
whose parents can't afford rehab.

Ariel Gonzalez teaches English at the Wolfson Campus of Miami-Dade
Community College.