The World of Caffeine by Bennett Weinberg and Bonnie Bealer, Routledge,
拢17.99, ISBN 0415927226; White Mischief by Tim Madge, Mainstream,
拢9.99, ISBN 1840184051; Cocaine by Dominic Streatfeild, Virgin, 拢20,
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ISBN 1852279214
CAFFEINE kick-starts the day for billions of people the world over. It is, as
Bennett Weinberg and Bonnie Bealer rightly point out, the world鈥檚 most popular
drug. Caffeine drinks permeate almost all the world鈥檚 cultures, and tea,
coffee and chocolate all have exotic early histories.
All three drinks have inspired religious contemplation and been embroiled in
the politics of temperance. They were portrayed as poisons or panaceas before
their gradual acceptance and eventual conquest of Western tastes. In The World
of Caffeine, Weinberg and Bealer trace their history with fascinating anecdotes.
These stories have rarely been told with so much skill. They also cover less
well-documented aspects of caffeine such as the coffee-house culture of modern
Japan and the rise of high-caffeine drinks at the end of the 20th century.
They are also meticulous in describing the scientific and medical background.
But studying the effects of caffeine brings its own peculiar problems. Marijuana
research is hampered by its illegal status, but the problem with caffeine is
that nearly everyone is physically dependent on caffeine, whether they
admit it or not. Experiments on its mental and physical effects are very
difficult to gauge if we鈥檙e already addicted!
Caffeine may, in fact, be truly mind-altering despite its seemingly modest
psychoactive properties. It causes the dendritic spines of nerve cells to grow
and develop, which apparently results in better long-term memory function. There
can be few smokers who are not also coffee addicts. This may not be such a bad
thing. Caffeine may actually delay chronic obstructive lung disease.
Although sometimes implicated in health scares, caffeine comes out pretty
unscathed with none of the charges against it sticking, from carcinogenic
effects, raising of cholesterol levels to birth abnormalities and so on.
Caffeine shows no signs of surrendering its sovereign position in the hierarchy
of humanity鈥檚 drugs of choice and I know of no other book that better explains
how and why it got there than The World of Caffeine.
But take a look at another famous stimulant, cocaine. Caffeine and cocaine
have very different cultural biographies. Their stories intertwined in the early
history of Coca-Cola. As illegal drug-users love to point out, the drink that
symbolises the American ethos once counted cocaine among its ingredients.
Cocaine has had a Jekyll-and-Hyde history: champagne drug and scourge of the
ghetto (as crack). It may not be quite as popular as caffeine, but it is one of
the world鈥檚 most lucrative products. Annual global sales are said to exceed
those of McDonald鈥檚, Kellogg鈥檚 and Microsoft combined.
But it鈥檚 impossible to study cocaine without considering its legal status.
Both White Mischief and Cocaine try to rehabilitate the drug鈥檚 notoriety from
different perspectives.
Tim Madge makes the simple and sound point that the biggest opposition to the
decriminalisation and legalisation of cocaine would probably come not from the
governments or the 鈥渕oral majority鈥�, but from the criminal cartels. In White
Mischief, he asks if it is such a bad idea to transport a massive industry out
of the sphere of organised crime. He advocates a return to the days before the
Draconian drug acts made numerous substances illegal. He sees the Dutch liberal
policy on cocaine as providing: 鈥渁 small beacon in an otherwise entirely unlit
濒补苍诲蝉肠补辫别鈥�.
Dominic Streatfeild comes straight to the point in Cocaine: it is so popular
because people have fun using it. He also seems to have greatly enjoyed writing
about it, which, as he says, gave him the chance to interview cartel leaders,
imprisoned crack barons and DEA officers, as well as trace Freud鈥檚 love affair
with the drug and chew coca in the Andes. Some subjects are so multi-faceted
that each new biography brings something fresh to light. Streatfeild鈥檚 biography
reminds us that the human quest for pleasure means that cocaine is no more
likely to disappear than its distant cousin caffeine.