Why is cocaine bad for you, but raw, natural coca leaf is not?
In: Chemistry
Even the raw, natural form has the *potential* to be bad for you. Some people are better off avoiding even milder nervous system stimulants, including raw coca leaf, coffee, and nicotine/tobacco. It’s just that coca leaf is much less potent than refined cocaine, and it takes much longer to get the substance into your body, so it’s far more difficult to overdo it.
Because people only chew one or two leaves at a time and it takes a while instead of snorting concentrated 10 leaves instantly
Like drinking coffee instead of snorting caffeine pills that are the equivalent to 5 cups
You can ask this for a lot of different stuff, and the answer is usually quantity/concentration. Eating an orange is healthy, but juicing 5 of them and drinking it several times a day is not.
Stimulants are in a different category since you are altering your brain chemistry where it needs to recalibrate the feelgood scale from having a 1-10 range to 1-100, and there is now only one thing that can nudge you over 10%.
Natural coca leaf can still be bad for you if you use it enough.
Cocaine is just the highly concentrated active part of the Coca leaf, so it’s easier to consume more of it, which increases your risk of things like overdose or addiction and other associated health issues. (You still get those risks with natural coca leaf, it’s just harder to consume enough to get that effect). Additionally with cocaine, it’s processed with chemicals that can be harmful and almost always cut with other things that are bad for you.
Raw coca leaves contain trace amounts of cocaine. Drug manufacturers use chemical processes to extract the cocaine from the leaves, and it takes an absolute fuckton of leaves to create any meaningful amount. Consuming enough coca leaves to equate to a normal hit of cocaine is practically physically impossible.
Why is sunlight good for you, but a nuke is bad for you? The amount and concentration is different.
Cocaine is a highly concentrated form of coca leaves. In fact, the cocaine alkaloid thats ends up as a powder is about 0.5-1% of a coca leaf. You really wouldn’t be able to consume enough leaves to have anything other than a mild stimulant effect, like coffee.
But coffee is a decent example. The average cup of coffee has about 100mg of caffeine. Most OTC caffeine supplements have 100mg each. But if you took 2000mg (2gm) of caffeine at once, you’re gonna have a bad time.
Cocaine is the same. You’re getting GRAMS of purified, crystallized cocaine dumped into your system at once.
Flippant answer: You can grow coca leaf but getting hold of cocaine puts you in contact with drug dealers, and that can be bad for your health.
The whole drug trade is a series of criminal activities in a chain leading to your door. Exploitation, corruption, murder, smuggling, gang warfare – everyone involved in all of that is not someone you would want to meet, all so you can get high.
Why is sugar bad for you but fruit is not?
Almost everything is bad in high concentration, which is what cocine is. Why is drinking a small glass of wine each day okey, but a bottle bad?
Why is eating poppy seeds in your bread okey but injecting heroine bad?
Etc.
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