Some Drugs are Bad, M'kay.

Cocaine is a killer.

It kills the folk who process it.

It takes 500g of leaves to produce 1g of cocaine, which is why coca chewing and coca tea (maté de coca) do not have the same dangers for the user. It would be impossible to consume coca quickly enough and in such a way that the alkaloids (l-ecgonine, cinnamyl cocaine and alpha and beta-truxillyl ecgonine if you give a fuck) were efficiently released into the blood in such a way as to get more than about 1/4 gram of active ingredient into the system in any 24 hour period.

Chewing coca and coca tea have more of a relaxing, clarifying effect and induce a positivity of mood. Think caffeine without, ironically enough, the jitteryness.

Coca leaves have been chewed and brewed in South America for over 5000 years with no ill effects.
However, to satisfy western demand for intensity, the leaves are processed so as to extract the cocaine.

The first stage involves dumping stripped leaves into a large plastic lined pit (which has to be hidden from the authorities naturally) and mixing them with dilute hydrochloric acid. The mixing is achieved by stomping around in the pit with the leaves and the acid. Sounds like fun right?

This stage produces (paste/pasta/paco) which is around 70% active ingredients. This intermediate stage is very common in the urban slums of South America. It is nasty stuff. Paco is as much of a problem in Buenos Aires since the 2001 collapse as Herion or Crack Cocaine were in US slums in the 80s/90s.

The second production phase is even more deadly. It is also quite complicated and I'm not sure I get the chemistry, but needless to say, it involves more acid as well as potassium permanganate and benzine. This produces a very [ure salt called cocaine hydrochloride.

The third phase is the creation of freebase or crack cocaine.

Smokable coke was developed by the pharmaceutical company Parke-Davies (now a subsidiary of Pfizer) in 1886 and marketed by them as the key ingredient of their 'coca-cigars' product line (incidentally, they also had a neat little vial/needle combo for cocaine injection on public sale too!).however this simply involved smoking the salt and this had the problem that the alkaloids would tend to degrade rather than vaporise.

This problem was solved 100 years later when a simple process involving baking soda and a microwave led to the crack epidemic we know ad loathe.

It kills the folk who fight over its profit.

The number of folk who are killed in the most horrific ways over 'territory' in the cocaine wholesale/retail business is astronomical. This is really more of a legality issue than a chemical one granted, but marijuana dealers aren't being tortured and executed are they?

It kills the folk who use it:

This is the part we already know.