ABSTRACT
The earliest known use of tobacco was classically ritualistic. Antinomianism has been an important theme in modern culture, beginning with the romanticist movement at the turn of the nineteenth century. Ritual theory thus helps explain whether psychoactive substances become legitimate and widely accepted; contested by rival movements or tabooed and banned, that is, subject to popular scorn and legal prohibition. Cocaine made its first appearance as a practical drug, a local anesthetic, then self-administered for pain, endurance, and energy. Before cocaine was made illegal in the US in 1914, it was an ingredient in Coca-Cola, and thus occupied the niche now taken by Red Bull and similar energy drinks. The ritualistic partying among upper and upper-middle-class professionals and entrepreneurs during the late 1970's was the nearest cocaine came to becoming legitimated. Social rituals are one factor that would argue a key one among others in a multicausal pattern, including the biological dimensions of drug use.
