Cocaine Bust?

[Jeff G]

This is the longest of three docs dealing with what appears to be a drug bust. Anyone care to translate?



Jeff

[Maikäfer]

Hi Jeff,

I can't read the text too well (very small letters) but yes, this is about a drugs transaction through a hotel from the Belgian coast to France. The drugs will be hidden in a cheese shipment. Furthermore it says the owners of the mentioned cafes are criminal figures with many past convictions. Basically: police doing what they are still trying to do today. The text surprises me, it could be written yesterday ...

[torstenbel]

when was the text written? Are there any dates on it? It does not actually say that the cocain is hidden in cheese, it says that the criminals are thought to be using the code word cheese to describe cocain...would certainly be interested to read all the documents....Cheers, Torsten.

[Jeff G]

Sorry about the dark margin. I haven't removed anything from this folder yet. So, Some pages don't lie flat on the scanner. I think you can get most, if not all the words.

Jeff

[Dan Plomish]

Coke

Was cocaine a problem at the time, they show consumption of it in many movies of ww2, but was it used the same way as today? Was it a upper class drug at the time?

[Dan Plomish]

Coke

Was cocaine a problem at the time, they show consumption of it in many movies of ww2, but was it used the same way as today? Was it a upper class drug at the time?

[Mark Mac]

Perhaps this is common knowledge, but here it is.

Cocaine and heroin have been serious problems for a long time in many nations. Both were used in many common medicines for every day maladies. Of course these also led to addiction and were outlawed. Cocaine was an actual ingredient in COCA Cola. They made this illegal for a reason.

As someone stated earlier, Berlin was a decadent city in the 1920's, so I do not doubt that the drug was a problem. I also think that this problem was more than an upper class problem, but perhaps not common especially among the working classes. Cocaine became more expensive only when governments moved aggressively against it.

Heroin/Opium addiction was known as the "Soldiers Sickness" in the U.S. because so many wounded Civil War soldiers were given opium over long periods of time to ease the pain of amputation/surgery. These guys returned home and had to have more.

Sorry to ramble on, but I had a long discussion with an 84 year old lady who had used herion since she was 16 years old! Unbelievable but true! What shocked me was that this would have been in the 1920's! She could not convey the lesson strongly enough that her whole life was lived as a slave and there were few happy moments. Heroin controlled everything she did in life.

Please forgive my speech, but I am a very strong opponent of narcotics use and have seen, first hand, its effects.

[Dan Plomish]

'Thanks

Thanks Mark, Appreciate all the info, Most is known to me, and I realize that Cocaine was used for ages, but just wasnt sure as to how and by whom it was consumed.

As far as I know the media itself has only shown it since the 60's or so, or is there earlier movies or Other media depicting its use?

As far as Narcotics go, I feel the same as you, Ive seen far to many lives ruined due to the nature of such drugs, and have never yet to this day seen anything positive come from useing Cocaine.

[JaimeH]

A cocaine based liquid drug call Laudlum (not to sure of the spelling) was a common pain killer in the late 19th century. Many wounded civil war vets did become addicted to it. It was a Victorian era drug of choice in many circles. Authors like Edgar Allen Poe and Lewis Carroll were known to use it (just read Carrolls "Alice in Wonderland" to figure that out).

[Mark Mac]

My two favorite fictional characters were both Laudenum and cocaine users (addicts?) as well.

Anyone who has read Patrick O'Brien should be well aware that Stephan Maturin, the ship surgeon and second to Captain John "Lucky Jack" Aubrey, was a user of laudenum, and when having access, would chew the leaves of the coca bush itself.

And my all time favorite Mr. Sherlock Holmes was scolded on several occasions by Dr. Watson for using cocaine, by injection.

On the surface it appears that drug use, for both men, was a way for highly intelligtent, well respected men to "clear the mind" for higher thought and relief of stress. A closer look at the words (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was writing at the turn of the last century) shows that it was NOT looked upon as a healthy, morally correct choice.

"... Watson admonishing Holmes: “But consider! Count the cost! Your brain may, as you say, be roused and excited, but it is a pathological and morbid process, which involves increased tissue change, and may at least leave a permanent weakness. You know, too, what a black reaction comes upon you. Surely the game is hardly worth the candle. Why should you, for a mere passing pleasure, risk the loss of those great powers with which you have been endowed? Remember that I speak not only as one comrade to another, but as a medical man to one for whose constitution he is to some extent answerable” (The Sign of Four)

My apologies again for hijacking the photo and paper thread. This did get a little interesting though.

[TWP]

I thought Laudanum was an opiate (Paupaver somiverum) and not from the coca plant?

Has anyone read De Quincey's "Confessions of an opium eater"? It's a book by an English victorian gentleman and details the struggles he had with laudanum.

[Jeff G]

Still hoping one of the 300 plus viewers will grace us with a translation. Even if everyone only does a couple of lines or a paragraph. It doesn't need to be word for word.

For anyone who missed it, this happened in occupied Belgium in Oct. 1940.

Jeff