Norcotic Drugs/Medicines

Narcotic Drugs:-

COCAINE LEAF :(COCA)

INTRODUCTION 
MEDICAL USAGES 


Coca is any of the four cultivated plants in the family Erythroxylaceae, native to western South America. The plant is a cash crop in Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru. It also plays a role in many traditional Andean cultures as well as the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (see Traditional uses). Coca is known throughout the world for its psychoactive alkaloid, cocaine. The alkaloid content of coca leaves is low, between 0.25% and 0.77%.This means that chewing the leaves or drinkingcoca tea does not produce the intense high (euphoria, megalomania, depression) people experience with cocaine. Coca leaf extract had been used in Coca-Cola products from 1885, with cocaine being completely eliminated from the products in or around 1929. Extraction of cocaine from coca requires several solvents and a chemical process known as an acid/base extraction, which can fairly easily extract the alkaloids from the plant.

HISTORY:-
Traces of coca have been found inmummies dating 3000 years back.^[24] Other evidence dates the communal chewing of coca with lime 8000 years back.^[25] Extensive archaeological evidence for the chewing of coca leaves dates back at least to the 6th century AD Moche period, and the subsequent Inca period, based on mummies found with a supply of coca leaves, pottery depicting the characteristic cheek bulge of a coca chewer, spatulas for extracting alkali and figured bags for coca leaves and lime made from precious metals, and gold representations of coca in special gardens of the Inca in Cuzco.

Coca chewing may originally have been limited to the eastern Andes before its introduction to the Incas. As the plant was viewed as having a divine origin, its cultivation became subject to a state monopoly and its use restricted to nobles and a few favored classes (court orators, couriers, favored public workers, and the army) by the rule of the Topa Inca (1471–1493). As the Incan empire declined, the leaf became more widely available. After some deliberation, Philip II of Spain issued a decree recognizing the drug as essential to the well-being of the Andean Indians but urging missionaries to end its religious use. The Spanish are believed to have effectively encouraged use of coca by an increasing majority of the population to increase their labor output and tolerance for starvation, but it is not clear that this was planned deliberately.

^{In the early 20th century, the Dutch colony of Java became a leading exporter of coca leaf. By 1912 shipments to Amsterdam, where the leaves were processed into cocaine, reached 1 million kg, overtaking the Peruvian export market. Apart from the years of the First World War, Java remained a greater exporter of coca than Peru until the end of the 1920s.Other colonial powers also tried to grow coca (including the British in India), but with the exception of the Japanese in Formosa, these were relatively unsuccessful.}

Medicine

Traditional medical uses of coca are foremost as a stimulant to overcome fatigue, hunger, and thirst. It is considered particularly effective against altitude sickness.It also is used as an anesthetic and analgesic to alleviate the pain of headache,rheumatism, wounds and sores, etc. Before stronger anaesthetics were available, it also was used for broken bones, childbirth, and during trepanning operations on the skull. The high calcium content in coca explains why people used it for bone fractures. Because coca constricts blood vessels, it also serves to oppose bleeding, and coca seeds were used for nosebleeds. Indigenous use of coca has also been reported as a treatment for malaria, ulcers, asthma, to improve digestion, to guard against bowel laxity, as an aphrodisiac, and credited with improving longevity. Modern studies have supported a number of these medical applications.

What are the medical complications of cocaine?

Cocaine causes many adverse effects to many organ systems. Some complications are dependent on the route of exposure.

• Bones

• Cocaine, when inserted in the nose (snorted) can cause breakdown of the cartilage and bones in and around the nose creating holes in the septum (the septum separates the nostrils).

• Brain and nerves

• Cocaine use can cause difficulty walking, headache, seizures, spontaneous bleeding, stroke, temporary or permanent memory and attention problems, and tremors. Intranasal (in the nose) users can lose their sense of smell and suffer from frequent nosebleeds. Intravenous (in the veins) users are at risk for infections that can be located in the brain in addition to other areas of the body.

• Gastrointestinal

• Cocaine can cause severe abdominal pain, bloody diarrhea, nausea and vomiting. Intravenous users are at increased risk for viral hepatitis if they use contaminated needles.

• Heart

• Cocaine can cause chest pain, high blood pressure, fast or abnormal heart rate, heart attack, problems with heart muscle contraction and rupture of the aorta (main blood vessel from the heart). Intravenous users are at increased risk for infections of the heart and its valves.

• Lung

• People who smoke cocaine can have shortness of breath and fluid or bleeding in the lung. They can rupture the lung, which results in air leaking into the chest.

• Kidney

• Cocaine can cause kidney damage

• Muscles

• Cocaine can cause severe muscle damage and pain.

• Cocaine use during pregnancy

• Cocaine use is associated with premature delivery, vaginal bleeding, sudden death, and birth defects.
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• prohibition of import export of norcotic drugs etc

• 1) No one shall:-
  (a) import 
  (b) export 
  (c) transport 
• (d) transship;
  any narcotic drug, psychotropic substance or controlled substance, save in accordance with rules made under sub-
• section (2) and in accordance with the conditions of any licence, permit or authorization for that purpose which may be required to be obtained under those rules.
• (2) The Federal Government may make rules permitting and regulating the import into and export  and transshipment of narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances or controlled substances, and such rules may prescribe the ports or places at which any kind fo narcotic drug, psychotropic substance or controlled substance may be imported, exported, transported within Pakistan or transshipped, the form and conditions of licence, permit or authorities by which such licences, permits or authorization may be granted, the fees that may be charged therefor, any other matter required to have effective control of the Federal Government over such import, export, transportation and transshipment .