Paul E. Gootenberg

Paul E. Gootenberg, associate professor of history at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, gathered information for a history of the international trade in coca/cocaine, from the early years (1850-1900) when it was considered a miracle drug, through the forging of global drug-control regimes (1900-50), to its current emergence as a "socially costly, even deadly scourge connecting the streets of urban North American with distant tropical peasant zones of the Andes." He organized a symposium at the Foundation on "From Miracle to Menace: Cocaine in Global and Historical Perspectives" attended by leading researchers in the field.