We Need to Talk About Cocaine (Again)

Witty Historian · Jul 16, 2026 · 1h 54m

This video covers the history of cocaine as a legal medicine in the United States, including cocaine toothache drops sold to children in the 1880s and the chain of events that turned a medically endorsed substance into a criminalized drug.In the late nineteenth century, cocaine was not a vice.. it was a prescription. Doctors recommended it, the U.S. Surgeon General endorsed it, Pope Leo XIII carried a flask of cocaine wine under his cassock, and a pharmacist in Albany, New York sold cocaine toothache drops to parents for fifteen cents with an advertisement showing two children playing in a…