title: Cocaine

text: The pharmacodynamics of cocaine involve the complex relationships of neurotransmitters (inhibiting monoamine uptake in rats with ratios of about: serotonin:dopamine = 2:3, serotonin:norepinephrine = 2:5). The most extensively studied effect of cocaine on the central nervous system is the blockade of the dopamine transporter protein. Dopamine neurotransmitter released during neural signaling is normally recycled via the transporter; i.e., the transporter binds the transmitter and pumps it out of the synaptic cleft back into the presynaptic neuron, where it is taken up into storage vesicles. Cocaine binds tightly at the dopamine transporter forming a complex that blocks the transporter's function. The dopamine transporter can no longer perform its reuptake function, and thus dopamine accumulates in the synaptic cleft. The increased concentration of dopamine in the synapse activates post-synaptic dopamine receptors, which makes the drug rewarding and promotes the compulsive use of cocaine.


title: Cocaine

text: Cocaine affects certain serotonin (5-HT) receptors; in particular, it has been shown to antagonize the 5-HT3 receptor, which is a ligand-gated ion channel. An overabundance of 5-HT3 receptors is reported in cocaine-conditioned rats, though 5-HT3's role is unclear. The 5-HT2 receptor (particularly the subtypes 5-HT2A, 5-HT2B and 5-HT2C) are involved in the locomotor-activating effects of cocaine.


title: Cocaine

text: Cocaine has been demonstrated to bind as to directly stabilize the DAT transporter on the open outward-facing conformation. Further, cocaine binds in such a way as to inhibit a hydrogen bond innate to DAT. Cocaine's binding properties are such that it attaches so this hydrogen bond will not form and is blocked from formation due to the tightly locked orientation of the cocaine molecule. Research studies have suggested that the affinity for the transporter is not what is involved in the habituation of the substance so much as the conformation and binding properties to where and how on the transporter the molecule binds.


title: Cocaine

text: Sigma receptors are affected by cocaine, as cocaine functions as a sigma ligand agonist. Further specific receptors it has been demonstrated to function on are NMDA and the D1 dopamine receptor.


title: Cocaine

text: Cocaine also blocks sodium channels, thereby interfering with the propagation of action potentials; thus, like lignocaine and novocaine, it acts as a local anesthetic. It also functions on the binding sites to the dopamine and serotonin sodium dependent transport area as targets as separate mechanisms from its reuptake of those transporters; unique to its local anesthetic value which makes it in a class of functionality different from both its own derived phenyltropanes analogues which have that removed. In addition to this, cocaine has some target binding to the site of the Kappa-opioid receptor. Cocaine also causes vasoconstriction, thus reducing bleeding during minor surgical procedures. Recent research points to an important role of circadian mechanisms and clock genes in behavioral actions of cocaine.


title: Cocaine

text: Cocaine is known to suppress hunger and appetite by increasing co-localization of sigma σR receptors and ghrelin GHS-R1a receptors at the neuronal cell surface, thereby increasing ghrelin-mediated signaling of satiety and possibly via other effects on appetitive hormones. Chronic users may lose their appetite and can experience severe malnutrition and significant weight loss.


title: Cocaine

text: Cocaine effects, further, are shown to be potentiated for the user when used in conjunction with new surroundings and stimuli, and otherwise novel environs.


title: Cocaine

text: Cocaine in its purest form is a white, pearly product. Cocaine appearing in powder form is a salt, typically cocaine hydrochloride. Street cocaine is often adulterated or "cut" with talc, lactose, sucrose, glucose, mannitol, inositol, caffeine, procaine, phencyclidine, phenytoin, lignocaine, strychnine, levamisole, amphetamine, or heroin.


title: Cocaine

text: The color of "crack" cocaine depends upon several factors including the origin of the cocaine used, the method of preparation – with ammonia or baking soda – and the presence of impurities. It will generally range from white to a yellowish cream to a light brown. Its texture will also depend on the adulterants, origin, and processing of the powdered cocaine, and the method of converting the base. It ranges from a crumbly texture, sometimes extremely oily, to a hard, almost crystalline nature.


title: Cocaine

text: Cocaine – a tropane alkaloid – is a weakly alkaline compound, and can therefore combine with acidic compounds to form salts. The hydrochloride (HCl) salt of cocaine is by far the most commonly encountered, although the sulfate (SO) and the nitrate (NO) salts are occasionally seen. Different salts dissolve to a greater or lesser extent in various solvents – the hydrochloride salt is polar in character and is quite soluble in water.


title: Cocaine

text: As the name implies, "freebase" is the base form of cocaine, as opposed to the salt form. It is practically insoluble in water whereas hydrochloride salt is water-soluble.


title: Cocaine

text: Smoking freebase cocaine has the additional effect of releasing methylecgonidine into the user's system due to the pyrolysis of the substance (a side effect which insufflating or injecting powder cocaine does not create). Some research suggests that smoking freebase cocaine can be even more cardiotoxic than other routes of administration because of methylecgonidine's effects on lung tissue and liver tissue.


title: Cocaine

text: Pure cocaine is prepared by neutralizing its compounding salt with an alkaline solution, which will precipitate non-polar basic cocaine. It is further refined through aqueous-solvent liquid–liquid extraction.


title: Cocaine

text: Crack is usually smoked in a glass pipe, and once inhaled, it passes from the lungs directly to the central nervous system, producing an almost immediate "high" that can be very powerful – this initial crescendo of stimulation is known as a "rush". This is followed by an equally intense low, leaving the user craving more drug. Addiction to crack usually occurs with four to six weeks; much more rapidly than with regular cocaine.


title: Cocaine

text: Powder cocaine (cocaine hydrochloride) must be heated to a high temperature (about 197 °C), and considerable decomposition/burning occurs at these high temperatures. This effectively destroys some of the cocaine and yields a sharp, acrid, and foul-tasting smoke. Cocaine base/crack can be smoked because it vaporizes with little or no decomposition at , which is below the boiling point of water.


title: Cocaine

text: Crack is a lower purity form of free-base cocaine that is usually produced by neutralization of cocaine hydrochloride with a solution of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate, NaHCO) and water, producing a very hard/brittle, off-white-to-brown colored, amorphous material that contains sodium carbonate, entrapped water, and other by-products as the main impurities. The origin of the name "crack" comes from the "crackling" sound (and hence the onomatopoeic moniker "crack") that is produced when the cocaine and its impurities (i.e. water, sodium bicarbonate) are heated past the point of vaporization.


title: Cocaine

text: Coca herbal infusion (also referred to as coca tea) is used in coca-leaf producing countries much as any herbal medicinal infusion would elsewhere in the world. The free and legal commercialization of dried coca leaves under the form of filtration bags to be used as "coca tea" has been actively promoted by the governments of Peru and Bolivia for many years as a drink having medicinal powers. In Peru, the National Coca Company, a state-run corporation, sells cocaine-infused teas and other medicinal products and also exports leaves to the U.S. for medicinal use.


title: Cocaine

text: Visitors to the city of Cuzco in Peru, and La Paz in Bolivia are greeted with the offering of coca leaf infusions (prepared in teapots with whole coca leaves) purportedly to help the newly arrived traveler overcome the malaise of high altitude sickness. The effects of drinking coca tea are mild stimulation and mood lift. It has also been promoted as an adjuvant for the treatment of cocaine dependence. One study on coca leaf infusion used with counseling in the treatment of 23 addicted coca-paste smokers in Lima, Peru found that the relapses rate fell from 4.35 times per month on average before coca tea treatment to one during treatment. The duration of abstinence increased from an average of 32 days before treatment to 217.2 days during treatment. This suggests that coca leaf infusion plus counseling may be effective at preventing relapse during cocaine addiction treatment.


title: Cocaine

text: There is little information on the pharmacological and toxicological effects of consuming coca tea. A chemical analysis by solid-phase extraction and gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (SPE-GC/MS) of Peruvian and Bolivian tea bags indicated the presence of significant amounts of cocaine, the metabolite benzoylecgonine, ecgonine methyl ester and trans-cinnamoylcocaine in coca tea bags and coca tea. Urine specimens were also analyzed from an individual who consumed one cup of coca tea and it was determined that enough cocaine and cocaine-related metabolites were present to produce a positive drug test.


title: Cocaine

text: The first synthesis and elucidation of the cocaine molecule was by Richard Willstätter in 1898. Willstätter's synthesis derived cocaine from tropinone. Since then, Robert Robinson and Edward Leete have made significant contributions to the mechanism of the synthesis. (-NO)


title: Cocaine

text: The additional carbon atoms required for the synthesis of cocaine are derived from acetyl-CoA, by addition of two acetyl-CoA units to the "N"-methyl-Δ-pyrrolinium cation. The first addition is a Mannich-like reaction with the enolate anion from acetyl-CoA acting as a nucleophile towards the pyrrolinium cation. The second addition occurs through a Claisen condensation. This produces a racemic mixture of the 2-substituted pyrrolidine, with the retention of the thioester from the Claisen condensation. In formation of tropinone from racemic ethyl [2,3-13C](Nmethyl-2-pyrrolidinyl)-3-oxobutanoate there is no preference for either stereoisomer. In cocaine biosynthesis, only the (S)-enantiomer can cyclize to form the tropane ring system of cocaine. The stereoselectivity of this reaction was further investigated through study of prochiral methylene hydrogen discrimination. This is due to the extra chiral center at C-2. This process occurs through an oxidation, which regenerates the pyrrolinium cation and formation of an enolate anion, and an intramolecular Mannich reaction. The tropane ring system undergoes hydrolysis, SAM-dependent methylation, and reduction via NADPH for the formation of methylecgonine. The benzoyl moiety required for the formation of the cocaine diester is synthesized from phenylalanine via cinnamic acid. Benzoyl-CoA then combines the two units to form cocaine.


title: Cocaine

text: The biosynthesis begins with L-Glutamine, which is derived to L-ornithine in plants. The major contribution of L-ornithine and L-arginine as a precursor to the tropane ring was confirmed by Edward Leete. Ornithine then undergoes a pyridoxal phosphate-dependent decarboxylation to form putrescine. In some animals, the urea cycle derives putrescine from ornithine. L-ornithine is converted to L-arginine, which is then decarboxylated via PLP to form agmatine. Hydrolysis of the imine derives "N"-carbamoylputrescine followed with hydrolysis of the urea to form putrescine. The separate pathways of converting ornithine to putrescine in plants and animals have converged. A SAM-dependent "N"-methylation of putrescine gives the "N"-methylputrescine product, which then undergoes oxidative deamination by the action of diamine oxidase to yield the aminoaldehyde. Schiff base formation confirms the biosynthesis of the "N"-methyl-Δ-pyrrolinium cation.


title: Cocaine

text: The biosynthesis of the tropane alkaloid is still not understood. Hemscheidt proposes that Robinson's acetonedicarboxylate emerges as a potential intermediate for this reaction. Condensation of "N"-methylpyrrolinium and acetonedicarboxylate would generate the oxobutyrate. Decarboxylation leads to tropane alkaloid formation.


title: Cocaine

text: The reduction of tropinone is mediated by NADPH-dependent reductase enzymes, which have been characterized in multiple plant species. These plant species all contain two types of the reductase enzymes, tropinone reductase I and tropinone reductase II. TRI produces tropine and TRII produces pseudotropine. Due to differing kinetic and pH/activity characteristics of the enzymes and by the 25-fold higher activity of TRI over TRII, the majority of the tropinone reduction is from TRI to form tropine.


title: Cocaine

text: In 2022, a GMO produced "N. benthamiana" were discovered that were able to produce 25% of the amount of cocaine found in a coca plant.


title: Cocaine

text: Cocaine and its major metabolites may be quantified in blood, plasma, or urine to monitor for use, confirm a diagnosis of poisoning, or assist in the forensic investigation of a traffic or other criminal violation or sudden death. Most commercial cocaine immunoassay screening tests cross-react appreciably with the major cocaine metabolites, but chromatographic techniques can easily distinguish and separately measure each of these substances. When interpreting the results of a test, it is important to consider the cocaine usage history of the individual, since a chronic user can develop tolerance to doses that would incapacitate a cocaine-naive individual, and the chronic user often has high baseline values of the metabolites in his system. Cautious interpretation of testing results may allow a distinction between passive or active usage, and between smoking versus other routes of administration.


title: Cocaine

text: Cocaine may be detected by law enforcement using the Scott reagent. The test can easily generate false positives for common substances and must be confirmed with a laboratory test.


title: Cocaine

text: Approximate cocaine purity can be determined using 1 mL 2% cupric sulfate pentahydrate in dilute HCl, 1 mL 2% potassium thiocyanate and 2 mL of chloroform. The shade of brown shown by the chloroform is proportional to the cocaine content. This test is not cross sensitive to heroin, methamphetamine, benzocaine, procaine and a number of other drugs but other chemicals could cause false positives.


title: Cocaine

text: According to a 2016 United Nations report, England and Wales are the countries with the highest rate of cocaine usage (2.4% of adults in the previous year). Other countries where the usage rate meets or exceeds 1.5% are Spain and Scotland (2.2%), the United States (2.1%), Australia (2.1%), Uruguay (1.8%), Brazil (1.75%), Chile (1.73%), the Netherlands (1.5%) and Ireland (1.5%).


title: Cocaine

text: Cocaine is the second most popular illegal recreational drug in Europe (behind cannabis). Since the mid-1990s, overall cocaine usage in Europe has been on the rise, but usage rates and attitudes tend to vary between countries. European countries with the highest usage rates are the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, and the Republic of Ireland.


title: Cocaine

text: Approximately 17 million Europeans (5.1%) have used cocaine at least once and 3.5 million (1.1%) in the last year. About 1.9% (2.3 million) of young adults (15–34 years old) have used cocaine in the last year (latest data available as of 2018).


title: Cocaine

text: Usage is particularly prevalent among this demographic: 4% to 7% of males have used cocaine in the last year in Spain, Denmark, the Republic of Ireland, Italy, and the United Kingdom. The ratio of male to female users is approximately 3.8:1, but this statistic varies from 1:1 to 13:1 depending on country.


title: Cocaine

text: Cocaine is the second most popular illegal recreational drug in the United States (behind cannabis) and the U.S. is the world's largest consumer of cocaine. Its users span over different ages, races, and professions. In the 1970s and 1980s, the drug became particularly popular in the disco culture as cocaine usage was very common and popular in many discos such as Studio 54.


title: Cocaine

text: Treatment with contingency management, such as providing vouchers for retail items contingent upon objectively-verified abstinence from recent drug use, has been shown in randomized clinical trials to significantly reduce the likelihood of having a positive test for the presence of cocaine.


title: Cocaine

text: TA-CD is an active vaccine developed by the Xenova Group which is used to negate the effects of cocaine, making it suitable for use in treatment of addiction. It is created by combining norcocaine with inactivated cholera toxin.


title: Cocaine

text: Indigenous peoples of South America have chewed the leaves of "Erythroxylon coca" – a plant that contains vital nutrients as well as numerous alkaloids, including cocaine – for over a thousand years. The coca leaf was, and still is, chewed almost universally by some indigenous communities. The remains of coca leaves have been found with ancient Peruvian mummies, and pottery from the time period depicts humans with bulged cheeks, indicating the presence of something on which they are chewing. There is also evidence that these cultures used a mixture of coca leaves and saliva as an anesthetic for the performance of trepanation.


title: Cocaine

text: When the Spanish arrived in South America, the conquistadors at first banned coca as an "evil agent of devil". But after discovering that without the coca the locals were barely able to work, the conquistadors legalized and taxed the leaf, taking 10% off the value of each crop. In 1569, Spanish botanist Nicolás Monardes described the indigenous peoples' practice of chewing a mixture of tobacco and coca leaves to induce "great contentment":


title: Cocaine

text: Although the stimulant and hunger-suppressant properties of coca had been known for many centuries, the isolation of the cocaine alkaloid was not achieved until 1855. Various European scientists had attempted to isolate cocaine, but none had been successful for two reasons: the knowledge of chemistry required was insufficient at the time, and contemporary conditions of sea-shipping from South America could degrade the cocaine in the plant samples available to European chemists.


title: Cocaine

text: The cocaine alkaloid was first isolated by the German chemist Friedrich Gaedcke in 1855. Gaedcke named the alkaloid "erythroxyline", and published a description in the journal "Archiv der Pharmazie."


title: Cocaine

text: In 1856, Friedrich Wöhler asked Dr. Carl Scherzer, a scientist aboard the "Novara" (an Austrian frigate sent by Emperor Franz Joseph to circle the globe), to bring him a large amount of coca leaves from South America. In 1859, the ship finished its travels and Wöhler received a trunk full of coca. Wöhler passed on the leaves to Albert Niemann, a PhD student at the University of Göttingen in Germany, who then developed an improved purification process.


title: Cocaine

text: Niemann described every step he took to isolate cocaine in his dissertation titled "Über eine neue organische Base in den Cocablättern" ("On a New Organic Base in the Coca Leaves"), which was published in 1860 and earned him his Ph.D. He wrote of the alkaloid's "colourless transparent prisms" and said that "Its solutions have an alkaline reaction, a bitter taste, promote the flow of saliva and leave a peculiar numbness, followed by a sense of cold when applied to the tongue." Niemann named the alkaloid "cocaine" from "coca" (from Quechua "kúka") + suffix "ine".


title: Cocaine

text: The first synthesis and elucidation of the structure of the cocaine molecule was by Richard Willstätter in 1898. It was the first biomimetic synthesis of an organic structure recorded in academic chemical literature. The synthesis started from tropinone, a related natural product and took five steps.


title: Cocaine

text: Because of the former use of cocaine as a local anesthetic, a suffix "-caine" was later extracted and used to form names of synthetic local anesthetics.


title: Cocaine

text: With the discovery of this new alkaloid, Western medicine was quick to exploit the possible uses of this plant.


title: Cocaine

text: In 1879, Vassili von Anrep, of the University of Würzburg, devised an experiment to demonstrate the analgesic properties of the newly discovered alkaloid. He prepared two separate jars, one containing a cocaine-salt solution, with the other containing merely saltwater. He then submerged a frog's legs into the two jars, one leg in the treatment and one in the control solution, and proceeded to stimulate the legs in several different ways. The leg that had been immersed in the cocaine solution reacted very differently from the leg that had been immersed in saltwater.


title: Cocaine

text: Karl Koller (a close associate of Sigmund Freud, who would write about cocaine later) experimented with cocaine for ophthalmic usage. In an infamous experiment in 1884, he experimented upon himself by applying a cocaine solution to his own eye and then pricking it with pins. His findings were presented to the Heidelberg Ophthalmological Society. Also in 1884, Jellinek demonstrated the effects of cocaine as a respiratory system anesthetic. In 1885, William Halsted demonstrated nerve-block anesthesia, and James Leonard Corning demonstrated peridural anesthesia. 1898 saw Heinrich Quincke use cocaine for spinal anesthesia.


title: Cocaine

text: In 1859, an Italian doctor, Paolo Mantegazza, returned from Peru, where he had witnessed first-hand the use of coca by the local indigenous peoples. He proceeded to experiment on himself and upon his return to Milan, he wrote a paper in which he described the effects. In this paper, he declared coca and cocaine (at the time they were assumed to be the same) as being useful medicinally, in the treatment of "a furred tongue in the morning, flatulence, and whitening of the teeth."


title: Cocaine

text: A chemist named Angelo Mariani who read Mantegazza's paper became immediately intrigued with coca and its economic potential. In 1863, Mariani started marketing a wine called Vin Mariani, which had been treated with coca leaves, to become coca wine. The ethanol in wine acted as a solvent and extracted the cocaine from the coca leaves, altering the drink's effect. It contained 6 mg cocaine per ounce of wine, but Vin Mariani which was to be exported contained 7.2 mg per ounce, to compete with the higher cocaine content of similar drinks in the United States. A "pinch of coca leaves" was included in John Styth Pemberton's original 1886 recipe for Coca-Cola, though the company began using decocainized leaves in 1906 when the Pure Food and Drug Act was passed.


title: Cocaine

text: In 1879 cocaine began to be used to treat morphine addiction. Cocaine was introduced into clinical use as a local anesthetic in Germany in 1884, about the same time as Sigmund Freud published his work "Über Coca", in which he wrote that cocaine causes:


title: Cocaine

text: By 1885 the U.S. manufacturer Parke-Davis sold coca-leaf cigarettes and cheroots, a cocaine inhalant, a Coca Cordial, cocaine crystals, and cocaine solution for intravenous injection. The company promised that its cocaine products would "supply the place of food, make the coward brave, the silent eloquent and render the sufferer insensitive to pain."


title: Cocaine

text: By the late Victorian era, cocaine use had appeared as a vice in literature. For example, it was injected by Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional Sherlock Holmes, generally to offset the boredom he felt when he was not working on a case.


title: Cocaine

text: In early 20th-century Memphis, Tennessee, cocaine was sold in neighborhood drugstores on Beale Street, costing five or ten cents for a small boxful. Stevedores along the Mississippi River used the drug as a stimulant, and white employers encouraged its use by black laborers.


title: Cocaine

text: In 1909, Ernest Shackleton took "Forced March" brand cocaine tablets to Antarctica, as did Captain Scott a year later on his ill-fated journey to the South Pole.


title: Cocaine

text: In the 1931 song "Minnie the Moocher", Cab Calloway heavily references cocaine use. He uses the phrase "kicking the gong around", slang for cocaine use; describes titular character Minnie as "tall and skinny;" and describes Smokey Joe as "cokey". In the 1932 comedy musical film "The Big Broadcast", Cab Calloway performs the song with his orchestra and mimes snorting cocaine in between verses.


title: Cocaine

text: During the mid-1940s, amidst World War II, cocaine was considered for inclusion as an ingredient of a future generation of 'pep pills' for the German military, code named D-IX.


title: Cocaine

text: In modern popular culture, references to cocaine are common. The drug has a glamorous image associated with the wealthy, famous and powerful, and is said to make users "feel rich and beautiful". In addition the pace of modern society − such as in finance − gives many the incentive to make use of the drug.


title: Cocaine

text: In many countries, cocaine is a popular recreational drug. In the United States, the development of "crack" cocaine introduced the substance to a generally poorer inner-city market. The use of the powder form has stayed relatively constant, experiencing a new height of use during the late 1990s and early 2000s in the U.S., and has become much more popular in the last few years in the UK.


title: Cocaine

text: Cocaine use is prevalent across all socioeconomic strata, including age, demographics, economic, social, political, religious, and livelihood.


title: Cocaine

text: The estimated U.S. cocaine market exceeded US$70 billion in street value for the year 2005, exceeding revenues by corporations such as Starbucks. Cocaine's status as a club drug shows its immense popularity among the "party crowd".


title: Cocaine

text: In 1995 the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) announced in a press release the publication of the results of the largest global study on cocaine use ever undertaken. An American representative in the World Health Assembly banned the publication of the study, because it seemed to make a case for the positive uses of cocaine. An excerpt of the report strongly conflicted with accepted paradigms, for example, "that occasional cocaine use does not typically lead to severe or even minor physical or social problems." In the sixth meeting of the B committee, the US representative threatened that "If World Health Organization activities relating to drugs failed to reinforce proven drug control approaches, funds for the relevant programs should be curtailed". This led to the decision to discontinue publication. A part of the study was recuperated and published in 2010, including profiles of cocaine use in 20 countries, but are unavailable .


title: Cocaine

text: In October 2010 it was reported that the use of cocaine in Australia has doubled since monitoring began in 2003.


title: Cocaine

text: A problem with illegal cocaine use, especially in the higher volumes used to combat fatigue (rather than increase euphoria) by long-term users, is the risk of ill effects or damage caused by the compounds used in adulteration. Cutting or "stepping on" the drug is commonplace, using compounds which simulate ingestion effects, such as Novocain (procaine) producing temporary anesthesia, as many users believe a strong numbing effect is the result of strong and/or pure cocaine, ephedrine or similar stimulants that are to produce an increased heart rate. The normal adulterants for profit are inactive sugars, usually mannitol, creatine, or glucose, so introducing active adulterants gives the illusion of purity and to 'stretch' or make it so a dealer can sell more product than without the adulterants. The adulterant of sugars allows the dealer to sell the product for a higher price because of the illusion of purity and allows the sale of more of the product at that higher price, enabling dealers to significantly increase revenue with little additional cost for the adulterants. A 2007 study by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction showed that the purity levels for street purchased cocaine was often under 5% and on average under 50% pure.


title: Cocaine

text: The production, distribution, and sale of cocaine products is restricted (and illegal in most contexts) in most countries as regulated by the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, and the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances. In the United States the manufacture, importation, possession, and distribution of cocaine are additionally regulated by the 1970 Controlled Substances Act.


title: Cocaine

text: Some countries, such as Peru and Bolivia, permit the cultivation of coca leaf for traditional consumption by the local indigenous population, but nevertheless, prohibit the production, sale, and consumption of cocaine. The provisions as to how much a coca farmer can yield annually is protected by laws such as the Bolivian Cato accord. In addition, some parts of Europe, the United States, and Australia allow processed cocaine for medicinal uses only.


title: Cocaine

text: Cocaine is a Schedule 8 prohibited substance in Australia under the Poisons Standard (July 2016). A schedule 8 substance is a controlled Drug – Substances which should be available for use but require the restriction of manufacture, supply, distribution, possession and use to reduce abuse, misuse, and physical or psychological dependence.


title: Cocaine

text: In Western Australia under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1981 4.0g of cocaine is the amount of prohibited drugs determining a court of trial, 2.0g is the amount of cocaine required for the presumption of intention to sell or supply and 28.0g is the amount of cocaine required for purposes of drug trafficking.


title: Cocaine

text: The US federal government instituted a national labeling requirement for cocaine and cocaine-containing products through the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. The next important federal regulation was the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914. While this act is often seen as the start of prohibition, the act itself was not actually a prohibition on cocaine, but instead set up a regulatory and licensing regime. The Harrison Act did not recognize addiction as a treatable condition and therefore the therapeutic use of cocaine, heroin, or morphine to such individuals was outlawed leading a 1915 editorial in the journal "American Medicine" to remark that the addict "is denied the medical care he urgently needs, open, above-board sources from which he formerly obtained his drug supply are closed to him, and he is driven to the underworld where he can get his drug, but of course, surreptitiously and in violation of the law." The Harrison Act left manufacturers of cocaine untouched so long as they met certain purity and labeling standards. Despite that cocaine was typically illegal to sell and legal outlets were rarer, the quantities of legal cocaine produced declined very little. Legal cocaine quantities did not decrease until the Jones–Miller Act of 1922 put serious restrictions on cocaine manufactures.


title: Cocaine

text: Before the early 1900s, the primary problem caused by cocaine use was portrayed by newspapers to be addiction, not violence or crime, and the cocaine user was represented as an upper- or middle-class White person. In 1914, "The New York Times" published an article titled "Negro Cocaine 'Fiends' Are a New Southern Menace", portraying Black cocaine users as dangerous and able to withstand wounds that would normally be fatal. The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 mandated prison sentences for 500 grams of powdered cocaine and 5 grams of crack cocaine. In the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, Whites reported a higher rate of powdered cocaine use, and Blacks reported a higher rate of crack cocaine use.


title: Cocaine

text: In 2004, according to the United Nations, 589 tonnes of cocaine were seized globally by law enforcement authorities. Colombia seized 188 t, the United States 166 t, Europe 79 t, Peru 14 t, Bolivia 9 t, and the rest of the world 133 t.


title: Cocaine

text: Colombia is as of 2019 the world's largest cocaine producer, with production more than tripling since 2013. Three-quarters of the world's annual yield of cocaine has been produced in Colombia, both from cocaine base imported from Peru (primarily the Huallaga Valley) and Bolivia and from locally grown coca. There was a 28% increase in the amount of potentially harvestable coca plants which were grown in Colombia in 1998. This, combined with crop reductions in Bolivia and Peru, made Colombia the nation with the largest area of coca under cultivation after the mid-1990s. Coca grown for traditional purposes by indigenous communities, a use which is still present and is permitted by Colombian laws, only makes up a small fragment of total coca production, most of which is used for the illegal drug trade.


title: Cocaine

text: An interview with a coca farmer published in 2003 described a mode of production by acid-base extraction that has changed little since 1905. Roughly of leaves were harvested per hectare, six times per year. The leaves were dried for half a day, then chopped into small pieces with a string trimmer and sprinkled with a small amount of powdered cement (replacing sodium carbonate from former times). Several hundred pounds of this mixture were soaked in of gasoline for a day, then the gasoline was removed and the leaves were pressed for the remaining liquid, after which they could be discarded. Then battery acid (weak sulfuric acid) was used, one bucket per of leaves, to create a phase separation in which the cocaine free base in the gasoline was acidified and extracted into a few buckets of "murky-looking smelly liquid". Once powdered caustic soda was added to this, the cocaine precipitated and could be removed by filtration through a cloth. The resulting material, when dried, was termed "pasta" and sold by the farmer. The 3750 pound yearly harvest of leaves from a hectare produced of "pasta", approximately 40–60% cocaine. Repeated recrystallization from solvents, producing "pasta lavada" and eventually crystalline cocaine were performed at specialized laboratories after the sale.


title: Cocaine

text: Attempts to eradicate coca fields through the use of defoliants have devastated part of the farming economy in some coca-growing regions of Colombia, and strains appear to have been developed that are more resistant or immune to their use. Whether these strains are natural mutations or the product of human tampering is unclear. These strains have also shown to be more potent than those previously grown, increasing profits for the drug cartels responsible for the exporting of cocaine. Although production fell temporarily, coca crops rebounded in numerous smaller fields in Colombia, rather than the larger plantations.


title: Cocaine

text: The cultivation of coca has become an attractive economic decision for many growers due to the combination of several factors, including the lack of other employment alternatives, the lower profitability of alternative crops in official crop substitution programs, the eradication-related damages to non-drug farms, the spread of new strains of the coca plant due to persistent worldwide demand.


title: Cocaine

text: The latest estimate provided by the U.S. authorities on the annual production of cocaine in Colombia refers to 290 metric tons.


title: Cocaine

text: As of the end of 2011, the seizure operations of Colombian cocaine carried out in different countries have totaled 351.8 metric tons of cocaine, i.e. 121.3% of Colombia's annual production according to the U.S. Department of State's estimates.


title: Cocaine

text: Synthesizing cocaine could eliminate the high visibility and low reliability of offshore sources and international smuggling, replacing them with clandestine domestic laboratories, as are common for illicit methamphetamine, but is rarely done. Natural cocaine remains the lowest cost and highest quality supply of cocaine. Formation of inactive stereoisomers (cocaine has four chiral centres – 1"R" 2"R", 3"S", and 5"S", two of them dependent, hence eight possible stereoisomers) plus synthetic by-products limits the yield and purity.


title: Cocaine

text: Organized criminal gangs operating on a large scale dominate the cocaine trade. Most cocaine is grown and processed in South America, particularly in Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, and smuggled into the United States and Europe, the United States being the world's largest consumer of cocaine, where it is sold at huge markups; usually in the US at $80–120 for 1 gram, and $250–300 for 3.5 grams ( of an ounce, or an "eight ball").


title: Cocaine

text: The primary cocaine importation points in the United States have been in Arizona, southern California, southern Florida, and Texas. Typically, land vehicles are driven across the U.S.–Mexico border. Sixty-five percent of cocaine enters the United States through Mexico, and the vast majority of the rest enters through Florida. , the Sinaloa Cartel is the most active drug cartel involved in smuggling illicit drugs like cocaine into the United States and trafficking them throughout the United States.


title: Cocaine

text: Cocaine traffickers from Colombia and Mexico have established a labyrinth of smuggling routes throughout the Caribbean, the Bahama Island chain, and South Florida. They often hire traffickers from Mexico or the Dominican Republic to transport the drug using a variety of smuggling techniques to U.S. markets. These include airdrops of in the Bahama Islands or off the coast of Puerto Rico, mid-ocean boat-to-boat transfers of , and the commercial shipment of tonnes of cocaine through the port of Miami.


title: Cocaine

text: Another route of cocaine traffic goes through Chile, which is primarily used for cocaine produced in Bolivia since the nearest seaports lie in northern Chile. The arid Bolivia–Chile border is easily crossed by 4×4 vehicles that then head to the seaports of Iquique and Antofagasta. While the price of cocaine is higher in Chile than in Peru and Bolivia, the final destination is usually Europe, especially Spain where drug dealing networks exist among South American immigrants.


title: Cocaine

text: Cocaine is also carried in small, concealed, kilogram quantities across the border by couriers known as "mules" (or "mulas"), who cross a border either legally, for example, through a port or airport, or illegally elsewhere. The drugs may be strapped to the waist or legs or hidden in bags, or hidden in the body. If the mule gets through without being caught, the gangs will reap most of the profits. If caught, gangs will sever all links and the mule will usually stand trial for trafficking alone.


title: Cocaine

text: Bulk cargo ships are also used to smuggle cocaine to staging sites in the western Caribbean–Gulf of Mexico area. These vessels are typically 150–250-foot (50–80 m) coastal freighters that carry an average cocaine load of approximately 2.5 tonnes. Commercial fishing vessels are also used for smuggling operations. In areas with a high volume of recreational traffic, smugglers use the same types of vessels, such as go-fast boats, like those used by the local populations.


title: Cocaine

text: Sophisticated drug subs are the latest tool drug runners are using to bring cocaine north from Colombia, it was reported on 20 March 2008. Although the vessels were once viewed as a quirky sideshow in the drug war, they are becoming faster, more seaworthy, and capable of carrying bigger loads of drugs than earlier models, according to those charged with catching them.


title: Cocaine

text: Cocaine is readily available in all major countries' metropolitan areas. According to the "Summer 1998 Pulse Check", published by the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, cocaine use had stabilized across the country, with a few increases reported in San Diego, Bridgeport, Miami, and Boston. In the West, cocaine usage was lower, which was thought to be due to a switch to methamphetamine among some users; methamphetamine is cheaper, three and a half times more powerful, and lasts 12–24 times longer with each dose. Nevertheless, the number of cocaine users remain high, with a large concentration among urban youth.


title: Cocaine

text: In addition to the amounts previously mentioned, cocaine can be sold in "bill sizes": for example, $10 might purchase a "dime bag", a very small amount (0.1–0.15 g) of cocaine. These amounts and prices are very popular among young people because they are inexpensive and easily concealed on one's body. Quality and price can vary dramatically depending on supply and demand, and on geographic region.


title: Cocaine

text: In 2008, the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction reports that the typical retail price of cocaine varied between €50 and €75 per gram in most European countries, although Cyprus, Romania, Sweden, and Turkey reported much higher values.


title: Cocaine

text: World annual cocaine consumption, as of 2000, stood at around 600 tonnes, with the United States consuming around 300 t, 50% of the total, Europe about 150 t, 25% of the total, and the rest of the world the remaining 150 t or 25%. It is estimated that 1.5 million people in the United States used cocaine in 2010, down from 2.4 million in 2006. Conversely, cocaine use appears to be increasing in Europe with the highest prevalences in Spain, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Ireland.


title: Cocaine

text: The 2010 UN World Drug Report concluded that "it appears that the North American cocaine market has declined in value from US$47 billion in 1998 to US$38 billion in 2008. Between 2006 and 2008, the value of the market remained basically stable".


title: The Witch (2015 film)

text: The Witch (stylized as The VVitch, and subtitled A New-England Folktale) is a 2015 folk horror film written and directed by Robert Eggers in his feature directorial debut. It stars Anya Taylor-Joy in her first film appearance, along with Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie, Harvey Scrimshaw, Ellie Grainger, and Lucas Dawson. Set in 1630s New England, it follows a Puritan family who encounter forces of evil in the woods beyond their farm.


title: The Witch (2015 film)

text: An international co-production of the United States and Canada, "The Witch" premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 27, 2015, and was widely released by A24 on February 19, 2016, to critical and financial success, grossing $40 million against a $4 million budget. It is considered by some to be one of the best horror films of 2016.


title: The Witch (2015 film)

text: In 1630s New England, English settler William and his family—wife Katherine, daughter Thomasin, son Caleb, and fraternal twins Mercy and Jonas—are banished from a Puritan colony over a religious dispute. The family builds a farm near a large, secluded forest and Katherine bears her fifth child, Samuel. One day, when Thomasin is playing peekaboo with Samuel, the baby abruptly disappears. It is soon revealed that a witch has stolen the unbaptized Samuel, killing him and using his body to make a flying ointment for her broomstick and her body.


title: The Witch (2015 film)

text: Katherine, devastated by Samuel's abduction, spends her days crying and praying. With their crops not growing sufficiently to harvest before winter, William takes Caleb to the woods to hunt for wild animals to eat. While hunting with his father, Caleb questions whether Samuel's unbaptized soul will reach Heaven. William discloses to Caleb that he traded Katherine's prized silver cup for hunting supplies in order to gather enough food for winter. That night, Katherine questions Thomasin about the disappearance of the cup and suspects her to be responsible for Samuel's disappearance. The children overhear their parents discussing the importance of Katherine's silver cup, which was their only resource if their crops continue to die, and the thought of sending Thomasin away to serve another family as she is reaching womanhood.


title: The Witch (2015 film)

text: Later, Thomasin finds Caleb at the stable preparing to check a trap in the forest, and forces him to take her with him by threatening to awaken their parents. In the woods, they spot a hare, which sends their horse into a panic. Their dog Fowler gives chase to the hare, and Caleb pursues them. The horse throws Thomasin, knocking her unconscious, and runs away. Caleb becomes lost in the woods and stumbles upon Fowler's disemboweled body. He then discovers a hovel, where the witch, disguised as a beautiful woman dressed in a red cape emerges to seduce him. She kisses and embraces Caleb, her arm growing old and withered as she caresses his head.


title: The Witch (2015 film)

text: William finds Thomasin and takes her home, and Katherine angrily chastises her for taking Caleb into the woods. To defend his daughter, William reluctantly admits that he sold the cup. Later that night, as a storm rages, Thomasin discovers Caleb outside the home, naked, delirious, and mysteriously ill. The next day, the twins converse and sing songs with Black Phillip, the family's billy goat, and accuse Thomasin of witchcraft. Thomasin attempts to milk the nanny goat, only to get blood. When Caleb awakens, he vomits up a whole apple with a single bite taken out of it. He convulses and screams as Katherine urges the family to pray. The twins claim to forget the proper words to the prayer and become unresponsive. Caleb passionately proclaims his love for Christ and dies.


title: The Witch (2015 film)

text: William, believing Thomasin to be a witch, tells her she will be put on trial when the family returns to town. Thomasin points out William's own sins and accuses the twins in retaliation, as well as adding that the Devil takes the form of a billy goat and that Black Philip is Lucifer. Enraged and confused about the identity of the real culprit among the family, William seals his remaining children in the goat house. Thomasin denies being a witch, but the twins do not answer when she asks if they have truly spoken with Black Phillip. Thomasin overhears William breaking down and confessing to God that he has been prideful, and that he made his family leave their village out of stubbornness rather than sincere religious devotion. Later in the night, the children awaken to see the witch drinking blood from the nanny goat, which turns to attack the twins. Meanwhile, Katherine has a hallucinatory vision of Caleb holding Samuel. Caleb offers the baby to her and asks if she will look at a book. She chooses to breastfeed the baby, but it is actually a raven that pecks at her breast, leaving her bloody in the morning.


title: The Witch (2015 film)

text: William awakens and finds the goat house destroyed, the goats eviscerated, the twins missing, and an unconscious Thomasin lying nearby with bloodstained hands. As Thomasin awakens, Black Phillip gores and kills William before her eyes. An unhinged Katherine, now blaming Thomasin for the tragedies that have befallen the family and accusing her of seducing William and Caleb, attacks her. Thomasin kills her mother with a bill hook in self-defense while crying.


title: The Witch (2015 film)

text: Now alone, Thomasin hears chiming and enters the stable, where she urges Black Phillip to speak to her. The goat responds with a human voice, asking if she would like to "live deliciously," in a life of luxury, and materializes into a tall, black-clad man. He tells Thomasin to remove her clothes and sign her name in a book that appears before her. Thomasin follows Black Phillip into the forest nude, where she finds a coven holding a Witches' Sabbath around a bonfire. The witches begin to levitate, and Thomasin joins them, laughing maniacally and ascending above the trees, with her newfound sense of belonging.


title: The Witch (2015 film)

text: Eggers, who lived in New Hampshire, was inspired to write the film by his childhood fascination with witches and frequent visits to the Plimoth Plantation as a schoolboy. After unsuccessfully pitching films that were "too weird, too obscure", Eggers realized that he would have to make a more conventional film. He said at a Q&A, "If I'm going to make a genre film, it has to be personal and it has to be good." Director Alfonso Cuarón read the screenplay in 2013, saying it made him "more than anything, curious." The production team worked extensively with British and American museums, as well as consulting experts on 17th-century British agriculture. Eggers wanted the set constructed to be as historically accurate as possible, and therefore brought in a thatcher and a carpenter from Virginia and Massachusetts respectively who had the proper experience building in the style of that period.


title: The Witch (2015 film)

text: Eggers wanted to film the picture on location in New England but the lack of tax incentives meant he had to settle for Canada. This proved to be something of a problem for Eggers, because he could not find the forest environment he was looking for in the country. They had to go "off the map", eventually finding a location (Kiosk, Ontario) that was "extremely remote"; Eggers said that the nearest town "made New Hampshire look like a metropolis".


title: The Witch (2015 film)

text: The casting took place in England, as Eggers wanted authentic accents to represent a family newly arrived in Plymouth.


title: The Witch (2015 film)

text: To give the film an authentic look, Eggers shot only "with natural light and indoors, the only lighting was candles". He also chose the spelling of the film's title as ""The VVitch"" (with two Vs instead of W) in its title sequence and on posters, stating that he found this spelling in a Jacobean-era pamphlet on witchcraft, and in other period texts.


title: The Witch (2015 film)

text: In December 2013, costume designer Linda Muir joined the crew, and consulted 35 books in the "Clothes of the Common People in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England" series to plan the costumes, which were made with wool, linen, and hemp. She also lobbied for a larger costume budget. A troupe of Butoh dancers played the coven of witches at the end of the film, creating their own choreography.


title: The Witch (2015 film)

text: Mark Korven wrote the film's score, which aimed to be "tense and dissonant" while focusing on minimalism. Eggers vetoed the use of any electronic instruments and "didn't want any traditional harmony or melody in the score"; so Korven chose to create music with atypical instruments, including the nyckelharpa and waterphone. He knew the director liked to retain a degree of creative control, so he relied on loose play centered on improvisation "so that [Eggers] could move notes around whenever he wanted".


title: The Witch (2015 film)

text: According to analysts, the film's impact is delivered not through scares, but by the effect of ambience and scenography. This is stylistically represented by the film's use of expressionist lighting, the use of different kinds of camera to draw thematic limits, the editing employed to hide horror from the main sight, and the soundtrack's sonic dissonance accompanying instrumental scenes. Samuel's physically impossible disappearance at the beginning of the film introduces the viewer to the film's atmosphere.


title: The Witch (2015 film)

text: The film's plot orbits around a psychological conflict, using a repressive, patriarchal portrayal of Puritan society and the dark, murderous liberation of the witches. The main female character, Thomasin, harbors worldly desires that differ from those of her conventionally Christian family, yearning for independence, sexuality, acceptance and power. However, while her father and the Christian God fail to fulfill her needs, Satan instead speaks personally to her, offering her earthly satisfaction. Therefore, with the demise of her family and the rejection of the Puritan society, Thomasin joins Satan and the witches, her only alternative, in order to find her long desired control over her own life. Her nudity in the last scene reflects her act of casting out the bonds of her previous society.


title: The Witch (2015 film)

text: The difference between both options, nevertheless, is rendered blurred in an evocation of equal religious extremism. This is first felt in the architecture of the family's own home, which ironically resembles an archetypal witch's cottage itself, hinting the gradual reveal that evil is already installed in them. On the opposite side, Satan's temptation of Thomasin also acquires traits of ideological grooming, slowly alienating her from her family. At the end, despite her newfound cause and ecstatic laugh at the coven, Thomasin has not escaped her previous religiosity, but merely changed its direction, turning to murder in exchange for freedom.


title: The Witch (2015 film)

text: The symbolic conflict between civilization and nature is also present in all the aspects of the film. The family lives next to a dark forest, a place tied to witchcraft in their culture, which underlines the conflict between their civilized, patriarchal religion and the Gothic, wild natural world that surrounds them. The forest, as well as the state of nudity, are associated with monstrosity, with the untamed wilderness where the forbidden liberation and sexuality emerge. Accordingly, Caleb returns nude after being seduced by the witch, the witches themselves perform their acts while naked, and Thomasin eventually adopts this code upon joining them. At the end of the film, nature triumphs over its adversary, with the Pan-like Black Phillip goring the axe-wielding William in a metaphor of man being consumed by the wild.


title: The Witch (2015 film)

text: The film had its world premiere at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, on January 27, 2015. The film was also screened in the Special Presentations section of the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival, on September 18, 2015. A24 and DirecTV Cinema acquired distribution rights to the film. The film received very positive reactions in advance screenings, so the studios decided to give the film a wide theatrical release in the United States, on February 19, 2016.


title: The Witch (2015 film)

text: The film was released on Blu-ray and digital HD on May 17, 2016, in the United States. The discs' extras include outtakes, audio commentary, a documentary—"The Witch: A Primal Folktale", which summarizes the cast and crew's making of the film—and a 30-minute question-and-answer session filmed in Salem, Massachusetts featuring director Eggers, lead actress Anya Taylor-Joy, and historians Richard Trask and Brunonia Barry. A 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray was released on April 23, 2019.


title: The Witch (2015 film)

text: "The Witch" grossed $25.1 million in the United States and Canada and $15.3 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $40.4 million.


title: The Witch (2015 film)

text: In the United States and Canada, the film was released alongside "Risen" and "Race", and was projected to gross $5–7 million from 2,046 theaters in its opening weekend. It made $3.3 million on its first day, and $8.8 million in its opening weekend, finishing fourth at the box office behind "Deadpool" ($56.5 million), "Kung Fu Panda 3" ($12.5 million), and "Risen" ($11.8 million).


title: The Witch (2015 film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 90% based on 331 reviews, with an average rating of 7.8/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "As thought-provoking as it is visually compelling, "The Witch" delivers a deeply unsettling exercise in slow-building horror that suggests great things for debuting writer-director Robert Eggers." Metacritic reports a weighted average score of 83 out of 100, based on 46 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C−" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported filmgoers gave it a 55% overall positive score and a 41% "definite recommend".


title: The Witch (2015 film)

text: Writing in "Variety", Justin Chang commented that "A fiercely committed ensemble and an exquisite sense of historical detail conspire to cast a highly atmospheric spell in "The Witch", a strikingly achieved tale of a mid-17th-century New England family's steady descent into religious hysteria and madness." Yohana Desta of "Mashable" stated that "The Witch" is a "stunningly crafted experience that'll have you seeking out a church as soon as you leave the theater". Peter Travers, in his "Rolling Stone" review, gave the film 3½ stars, and wrote of the film: "Building his film on the diabolical aftershocks of Puritan repression, Eggers raises "The Witch" far above the horror herd. He doesn't need cheap tricks. Eggers merely directs us to look inside." Stephanie Zacharek summarized the movie in "Time" as "a triumph of tone", writing that "Although Eggers is extremely discreet—the things you don't see are more horrifying than those you do—the picture's relentlessness sometimes feels like torment." Gregory Wakeman, writing for CinemaBlend, rated it five stars, writing that "[its] acting, lighting, music, writing, production design, cinematography, editing, and direction all immediately impress. While, at the same time, they combine to create an innately bewitching tale that keeps you on tenterhooks all the way up until its grandiose but enthralling finale." Ann Hornaday wrote in "The Washington Post" that the film joins the ranks of horror films such as "The Exorcist", "The Omen", and "Rosemary's Baby", saying that "The Witch" "comports itself less like an imitator of those classics than their progenitor... a tribute to a filmmaker who, despite his newcomer status, seems to have arrived in the full throes of maturity, in full control of his prodigious powers." Independent filmmaker Jay Bauman of RedLetterMedia named it his favorite film of 2016, enthusiastically stating "I love it, I think it's a masterpiece... It's a first-time filmmaker which is shocking to me... because it feels like it's made by someone who's been making movies for decades who's a master of their craft".


title: The Witch (2015 film)

text: However, some critics as well as audiences were less pleased with the film; Ethan Sacks, of the "New York Daily News", wrote that while the film does not suffer from the cinematography, acting, or setting, early on it "seems that "The Witch" is tapping a higher metaphor for coming of age...or religious intolerance...or man's uneasy balance with nature...or something. It doesn't take long into the film's hour and a half running time, however, to break that spell." Critics have noted that the film has received backlash from audiences regarding the film's themes and slow approach to horror; Lesley Coffin criticized A24, saying it was "a huge mistake" to market "The Witch" as a terrifying horror film:


title: The Witch (2015 film)

text: "HitFix" writer Chris Eggertson was critical of mainstream Hollywood; he said that "The Witch" "got under [his] skin profoundly", though he argued that it "did not have the moment-to-moment, audience-pleasing shocks that moviegoers have become accustomed to thanks to movies like "Sinister" and "The Purge" and "Paranormal Activity" and every other Blumhouse and Platinum Dunes title in the canon."


title: The Witch (2015 film)

text: Horror authors Stephen King and Brian Keene both reacted positively towards the film; King tweeted significant praise for the film, stating, ""The Witch" scared the hell out of me. And it's a real movie, tense and thought-provoking as well as visceral", while Keene, on social media, stated, ""The Witch" is a gorgeous, thoughtful, scary horror film that 90% of the people in the theater with you will be too stupid to understand."


title: The Witch (2015 film)

text: Julia Alexander of "Polygon" states that "The Witch" "asks people to try and understand what life would have been like for a family of devout Christians living in solitude, terrified of what may happen if they go against the word of God". In "The Atlantic", Alissa Wilkinson stated that many films featured at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival—"The Witch", along with "Last Days in the Desert", "Don Verdean", and "I Am Michael"—reveal a "resurgence of interest in the religious" and described "The Witch" as "a chilling circa-1600 story of the devil taking over a devout, Scripture-quoting family". Eve Tushnet commented in an article in "TAC", which was also published in "First Things", that "The Witch"s view of witchcraft is "not revisionist" and further states that the film is "pervaded by the fear of God. There are occasional references to His mercy but only as something to beg for, not something to trust in".


title: The Witch (2015 film)

text: A review by Adam R. Holz on "Plugged In", a publication of the conservative Christian organisation Focus on the Family, heavily criticised the film, stating that:


title: The Witch (2015 film)

text: Josh Larsen of "Think Christian", however, offered a different Christian explanation of the conclusion of the film, stating that in "encountering evil, the family in the film veers wildly back and forth between 'triumphalism' and 'defeatism,' two theological extremes" and "in refusing to allow for grace, they become easy pickings for the witch".


title: Walt Disney Pictures

text: Walt Disney Pictures is an American film production company and subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios, which is owned by The Walt Disney Company. The studio is the flagship producer of live-action feature films within the Walt Disney Studios unit, and is based at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California. Animated films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar Animation Studios are also released under the studio banner. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures distributes and markets the films produced by Walt Disney Pictures.


title: Walt Disney Pictures

text: Disney began producing live-action films in the 1950s. The live-action division became Walt Disney Pictures in 1983, when Disney reorganized its entire studio division; which included the separation from the feature animation division and the subsequent creation of Touchstone Pictures. At the end of that decade, combined with Touchstone's output, Walt Disney Pictures elevated Disney to one of Hollywood's major film studios.


title: Walt Disney Pictures

text: Walt Disney Pictures is currently one of five live-action film studios within the Walt Disney Studios, the others being 20th Century Studios, Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm, and Searchlight Pictures. The 2019 remake of "The Lion King" is the studio's highest-grossing animated film worldwide with $1.6 billion, and "Pirates of the Caribbean" is the studio's most successful film series, with five films earning a total of over $4.5 billion in worldwide box office gross.


title: Walt Disney Pictures

text: The studio's predecessor (and the modern-day The Walt Disney Company's as a whole) was founded as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, by filmmaker Walt Disney and his business partner and brother, Roy, in 1923.


title: Walt Disney Pictures

text: The creation of Mickey Mouse and subsequent short films and merchandise generated revenue for the studio which was renamed as The Walt Disney Studio at the Hyperion Studio in 1926. In 1929, it was renamed again to Walt Disney Productions. The studio's streak of success continued in the 1930s, culminating with the 1937 release of the first feature-length animated film, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", which becomes a huge financial success. With the profits from "Snow White", Walt relocated to a third studio in Burbank, California.


title: Walt Disney Pictures

text: In the 1940s, Disney began experimenting with full-length live-action films, with the introduction of hybrid live action-animated films such as "The Reluctant Dragon" (1941) and "Song of the South" (1946). That same decade, the studio began producing nature documentaries with the release of "Seal Island" (1948), the first of the "True-Life Adventures" series and a subsequent Academy Award winner for Best Live-Action Short Film.


title: Walt Disney Pictures

text: Walt Disney Productions had its first fully live-action film in 1950 with the release of "Treasure Island""," considered by Disney to be the official conception for what would eventually evolve into the modern-day Walt Disney Pictures. By 1953, the company ended their agreements with such third-party distributors as RKO Radio Pictures and United Artists and formed their own distribution company, Buena Vista Distribution. By the 1950s, the company had purchased the rights to his work of L. Frank Baum.


title: Walt Disney Pictures

text: The live-action division of Walt Disney Productions was incorporated as Walt Disney Pictures on April 1, 1983, to diversify film subjects and expand audiences for their film releases. In April 1983, Richard Berger was hired by Disney CEO Ron W. Miller as film president. Touchstone Films was started by Miller in February 1984 as a label for the studio's PG-13 and R-rated films with an expected half of Disney's yearly 6-to-8-movie slate, which would be released under the label. That same year, newly named Disney CEO Michael Eisner pushed out Berger, replacing him with Eisner's own film chief from Paramount Pictures, Jeffrey Katzenberg. Touchstone and Hollywood Pictures were formed within that unit on February 15, 1984, and February 1, 1989, respectively.


title: Walt Disney Pictures

text: The Touchstone Films banner was used by then new Disney CEO Michael Eisner in the 1984–1985 television season with the short lived western, "Wildside". In the next season, Touchstone produced a hit in "The Golden Girls".


title: Walt Disney Pictures

text: David Hoberman was promoted to president of production at Walt Disney Pictures in April 1988. In April 1994, Hoberman was promoted to president of motion picture production at Walt Disney Studios and David Vogel was appointed as Walt Disney Pictures president. The following year, however Hoberman resigned from the company, and instead began a production deal with Disney and his newly formed production company, Mandeville Films. In addition to Walt Disney Pictures, Vogel added the head position of Hollywood Pictures in 1997, while Donald De Line remained as head of Touchstone. Vogel was then promoted in 1998 to the head of Buena Vista Motion Pictures Group, the newly formed division that oversaw all live-action production within the Walt Disney Pictures, Touchstone, and Hollywood labels. The move was orchestrated by Walt Disney Studios chairman Joe Roth, as an effort to scale back and consolidate the studio's film production. As a result of the restructuring, De Line resigned.


title: Walt Disney Pictures

text: That same year, Nina Jacobson became executive vice-president of live-action production for Buena Vista Motion Pictures Group. Jacobson remained under this title until May 1999, when Vogel resigned from the company, and Jacobson was appointed by Roth to the role of president of production. During her tenure, Jacobson oversaw the production of films at Walt Disney Pictures, including "Pirates of the Caribbean, The Chronicles of Narnia, Bridge to Terabithia, National Treasure," "Remember the Titans", and "The Princess Diaries""," and was responsible for establishing a first-look deal with Jerry Bruckheimer Films. In 2006, Jacobson was fired by studio chairman Dick Cook, and replaced with by Oren Aviv, the head of marketing.


title: Walt Disney Pictures

text: After two films based on Disney theme park attractions, Walt Disney Pictures selected it as a source of a line of films starting with "The Country Bears" (2002) and "The Haunted Mansion" and "" (both 2003). The latter film—the first film produced by the studio to receive a PG-13 rating—began a film series that was followed by four sequels, with the franchise taking in more than $5.4 billion worldwide from 2003 to 2017. On January 12, 2010, Aviv stepped down as the studio's president of live-action production.


title: Walt Disney Pictures

text: In January 2010, Sean Bailey was appointed the studio's president of live-action production, replacing Aviv. Bailey had produced "" for the studio, which was released later that same year. Under Bailey's leadership and with support from then Disney CEO Bob Iger—and later studio chairman Alan Horn—Walt Disney Pictures pursued a tentpole film strategy, which included an expanded slate of original and adaptive large-budget tentpole films. Beginning in 2011, the studio simplified the branding in its production logo and marquee credits to just "Disney". Concurrently, Disney was struggling with PG-13 tentpole films outside of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" series, with films such as "John Carter" (2012) and "The Lone Ranger" (2013) becoming major box office bombs. However, the studio had found particular success with live-action fantasy adaptations of properties associated with their animated films, which began with the commercial success of "Alice in Wonderland" (2010), that became the second billion-dollar-grossing film in the studio's history. With the continued success of "Maleficent" (2014) and "Cinderella" (2015), the studio saw the potential in these fantasy adaptations and officiated a trend of similar films, which followed with "The Jungle Book" (2016) and "Beauty and the Beast" (2017). By July 2016, Disney had announced development of nearly eighteen of these films consisting of sequels to existing adaptations, origin stories and prequels. Although Walt Disney Pictures produced several successful smaller-budgeted genre films throughout the 2010s, such as "The Muppets" (2011), "Saving Mr. Banks" (2013), and "Into the Woods" (2014), the studio shifted its production model entirely on tentpole films as they had found that a majority of the smaller genre films were becoming financially unsustainable in the theatrical market.


title: Walt Disney Pictures

text: In 2017, The Walt Disney Company announced it was creating its own streaming service platform. The new service, known as Disney+, would feature original programming created by the company's vast array of film and television production studios, including Walt Disney Pictures. As part of this new distribution platform, Bailey and Horn confirmed that Walt Disney Pictures would renew development on smaller-budgeted genre films that the studio had previously stopped producing for the theatrical exhibition market a few years prior. In 2018, nine films were announced to be in production or development for the service. These films would be budgeted between $20 million and $60 million. The studio is expected to produce approximately 3-4 films per year exclusively for Disney+, alongside its theatrical tentpole slate. Disney+ was launched on November 12, 2019, in the United States, Canada, and the Netherlands, with subsequent international expansions. Within the first two months of the service's launch, Walt Disney Pictures had released three films ("Lady and the Tramp", "Noelle," and "Togo") exclusively for Disney+.


title: Walt Disney Pictures

text: On March 12, 2020, Fox Family president Vanessa Morrison was named president of live-action development and production of streaming content for both Disney Live-Action and 20th Century Studios, reporting directly to Bailey. That same day, Philip Steuer and Randi Hiller were also appointed as president of the studio's physical, post-production and VFX, and executive vice president for casting, respectively–overseeing these functions for both Walt Disney Pictures and 20th Century Studios.


title: Walt Disney Pictures

text: Until 1985, instead of a traditional production logo, the opening credits of Disney films used to feature a title card that read "Walt Disney Presents", and later, "Walt Disney Productions Presents". In "Never Cry Wolf", and the pre-release versions of "Splash", it showed a light blue rectangle with the name "Walt Disney Pictures" and featured a white outline rectangle framing on a black screen.


title: Walt Disney Pictures

text: Beginning with the release of "Return to Oz" in 1985, Walt Disney Pictures introduced its fantasy castle logo. The version with its accompanying music premiered with "The Black Cauldron". The logo was created by Walt Disney Productions in traditional animation and featured a white silhouette of Disneyland's Sleeping Beauty Castle against a blue background, with the studio's name and underscored by "When You Wish Upon a Star", in arrangement composed by John Debney. A short rendition of the logo was used as a closing logo as well as in the movie "Return to Oz", although the film was released months before "The Black Cauldron" was released. A computer-animated RenderMan variant appeared before every Pixar Animation Studios film from "Toy Story" until "Ratatouille", featuring an original fanfare composed by Randy Newman, based on the opening score cue from "Toy Story". Beginning with "Dinosaur" (2000), an alternative logo featuring an orange castle and logo against a black background, was occasionally presented with darker tone and live-action films, though a few animated films such as "Brother Bear", the 2003 re-release of "The Lion King" and "The Wild" (the final film to use this logo) used this logo. The original incarnation of this logo resurfaced in 2021 for a merchandising line by ShopDisney, based on its original incarnation.


title: Walt Disney Pictures

text: In 2006, the studio's vanity card logo was updated with the release of "" at the behest of then-Walt Disney Studios chairman Dick Cook and studio marketing president Oren Aviv. Designed by Disney animation director Mike Gabriel and producer Baker Bloodworth, the modernized logo was created completely in computer animation by Wētā FX and yU+co and featured a 3D New Waltograph typography. The final rendering of the logo was done by Cameron Smith and Cyrese Parrish. In addition, the revamped logo includes visual references to "Pinocchio", "Dumbo", "Cinderella", "Peter Pan" and "Mary Poppins", and its redesigned castle incorporates elements from both the Cinderella Castle and the Sleeping Beauty Castle, as well as fireworks and Walt Disney's family crest. Mark Mancina wrote a new composition and arrangement of "When You Wish Upon a Star" to accompany the 2006 logo. It was co-arranged and orchestrated by David Metzger. In 2011, starting with "The Muppets", the sequence was modified to truncate the "Walt Disney Pictures" branding to "Disney", which has mainly been used originally in home media releases in 2007. The new logo sequence has been consistently modified for high-profile releases including "", "Maleficent", "Tomorrowland", "The Jungle Book", and "Beauty and the Beast."


title: Walt Disney Pictures

text: In 2022, a new production logo was introduced for the studio's 100th anniversary in 2023, which premiered at the 2022 D23 Expo. The new castle logo features an updated opening sequence in computer animation created by Disney Studios Content and Industrial Light & Magic and an arrangement of "When You Wish Upon a Star" by Christophe Beck. The magical arc that usually flies from right to left above the castle now flies from left to right, a subtle reference to several arc appearances since 2005, including the 2005 Hong Kong Disneyland logo, the 2006 Walt Disney Pictures print logo and most recently, the animated Disney+ logo. A byline appears below the Disney100 logo during the studio's 100th anniversary in 2023, reading "100 Years of Wonder". While containing the same visual references as the previous logo, new references added to it include "Pocahontas", "Up", "Hercules", "The Hunchback of Notre Dame", "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", "The Little Mermaid", "Tangled", "Brave" and "Beauty and the Beast", with the addition of the Matterhorn from "Third Man on the Mountain" and its Disneyland attraction and Pride Rock from "The Lion King" in the background beyond the castle. It made its on-screen public premiere on limited time D23 Expo Day 1 recap livestream on Disney+ and made its official debut with the release of "Strange World".


title: Walt Disney Pictures

text: The studio's first live-action film was "Treasure Island" (1950). Animated films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar are also released by Walt Disney Pictures. The studio has released four films that have received an Academy Award for Best Picture nomination: "Mary Poppins" (1964), "Beauty and the Beast" (1991), "Up" (2009), and "Toy Story 3" (2010).


title: Walt Disney Pictures

text: Walt Disney Pictures has produced five live-action films that have grossed over $1 billion at the worldwide box office: "" (2006), "Alice in Wonderland" (2010), "" (2011), "Beauty and the Beast" (2017) and "Aladdin" (2019); and has released eight animated films that have reached that milestone: "Toy Story 3" (2010), "Frozen" (2013), "Zootopia", "Finding Dory" (both 2016), "Incredibles 2" (2018), "The Lion King", "Toy Story 4", and "Frozen II" (three in 2019).


title: Walt Disney Pictures

text: Although Walt Disney Pictures maintains a family-friendly image, generally releasing G and PG-rated films, it does occasionally release films rated PG-13, something Touchstone Pictures was capable of doing until its closure in 2016. The first PG-13 rated film released by Walt Disney Pictures was "". Additionally, "Tales from Earthsea", a Studio Ghibli film, is the first and so far only animated film released by Walt Disney Pictures to receive the rating. "Hamilton" is notable for being the first Walt Disney Pictures film to use the expletive "fuck", although two instances of it were censored to avoid an R rating. The 2020 live-action remake of "Mulan" was the first live-action Disney remake to receive a PG-13 rating, with "Cruella" later following suit.


title: Leonid Brezhnev

text: Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev (19 December 1906– 10 November 1982) was a Soviet politician who served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union between 1964 and 1982 and Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet between 1960 and 1964 and again between 1977 and 1982. His 18-year term as General Secretary was second only to Joseph Stalin's in duration. Brezhnev's tenure as General Secretary remains debated by historians; while his rule was characterised by political stability and significant foreign policy successes, it was also marked by corruption, inefficiency, economic stagnation, and rapidly growing technological gaps with the West.


title: Leonid Brezhnev

text: Brezhnev was born to a working-class family in Kamenskoye (now Kamianske, Ukraine) within the Yekaterinoslav Governorate of the Russian Empire. After the results of the October Revolution were finalized with the creation of the Soviet Union, Brezhnev joined the Communist party's youth league in 1923 before becoming an official party member in 1929. When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, he joined the Red Army as a commissar and rose rapidly through the ranks to become a major general during World War II. Following the war's end, Brezhnev was promoted to the party's Central Committee in 1952 and rose to become a full member of the Politburo by 1957. In 1964, he garnered enough power to replace Nikita Khrushchev as First Secretary of the CPSU, the most powerful position in the country.


title: Leonid Brezhnev

text: During his tenure, Brezhnev's conservative, pragmatic approach to governance significantly improved the Soviet Union's international standing while stabilizing the position of its ruling party at home. Whereas Khrushchev often enacted policies without consulting the rest of the Politburo, Brezhnev was careful to minimize dissent among the party leadership by reaching decisions through consensus. Additionally, while pushing for détente between the two Cold War superpowers, he achieved nuclear parity with the United States and strengthened the Soviet Union's dominion over Central and Eastern Europe. Furthermore, the massive arms buildup and widespread military interventionism under Brezhnev's leadership substantially expanded the Soviet Union's influence abroad (particularly in the Middle East and Africa), although these endeavors would prove to be costly and would drag on the Soviet economy in the later years.


title: Leonid Brezhnev

text: Conversely, Brezhnev's disregard for political reform ushered in an era of societal decline known as the Brezhnev Stagnation. In addition to pervasive corruption and falling economic growth, this period was characterized by an increasing technological gap between the Soviet Union and the United States. Upon coming to power in 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev denounced Brezhnev's government for its inefficiency and inflexibility before implementing policies to liberalise the Soviet Union.


title: Leonid Brezhnev

text: After 1975, Brezhnev's health rapidly deteriorated and he increasingly withdrew from international affairs, while keeping his hold on power. He died on 10 November 1982 and was succeeded as general secretary by Yuri Andropov.


title: Leonid Brezhnev

text: Brezhnev was born on 19 December 1906 in Kamenskoye (now Kamianske, Ukraine) within the Yekaterinoslav Governorate of the Russian Empire, to metalworker Ilya Yakovlevich Brezhnev (1874–1934) and his wife, Natalia Denisovna Mazalova (1886–1975). His parents lived in Brezhnevo (Kursky District, Kursk Oblast, Russia) before moving to Kamenskoe. Brezhnev's ethnicity was given as Ukrainian in some documents, including his passport, and Russian in others. A statement confirming that he regarded himself as a Russian can be found in his book "Memories" (1979), where he wrote: "And so, according to nationality, I am Russian, I am a proletarian, a hereditary metallurgist."


title: Leonid Brezhnev

text: Like many youths in the years after the Russian Revolution of 1917, he received a technical education, at first in land management and then in metallurgy. He graduated from the Kamenskoye Metallurgical Technicum in 1935 and became a metallurgical engineer in the iron and steel industries of eastern Ukraine.


title: Leonid Brezhnev

text: Brezhnev joined the Communist Party youth organisation, the Komsomol, in 1923, and the Party itself in 1929. From 1935 to 1936 he completed the compulsory term of military service. After taking courses at a tank school, he served as a political commissar in a tank factory.


title: Leonid Brezhnev

text: During Stalin's Great Purge, Brezhnev was one of many apparatchiks who exploited the resulting openings in the government and the party to advance rapidly in the regime's ranks. In 1936, he became director of the Dniprodzerzhynsk Metallurgical Technicum (a technical college) and was transferred to the regional center of Dnipropetrovsk. In May 1937, he became deputy chairman of the Kamenskoye city soviet. In May 1938, after Nikita Khrushchev had taken control of the Ukrainian communist party, he was appointed head of the propaganda department of the Dnipropetrovsk regional communist party, and later, in 1939, a regional Party Secretary, in charge of the city's defense industries. Here, he took the first steps toward building a network of supporters which came to be known as the "Dnipropetrovsk Mafia" that would greatly aid his rise to power.


title: Leonid Brezhnev

text: When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, Brezhnev was, like most middle-ranking Party officials, immediately drafted. He worked to evacuate Dnipropetrovsk's industries before the city fell to the Germans on 26 August, and then was assigned as a political commissar. In October Brezhnev was made deputy of political administration for the Southern Front, with the rank of Brigade-Commissar (Colonel).


title: Leonid Brezhnev

text: When the Germans occupied Ukraine in 1942, Brezhnev was sent to the Caucasus as deputy head of political administration of the Transcaucasian Front. In April 1943 he became head of the Political Department of the 18th Army. Later that year, the 18th Army became part of the 1st Ukrainian Front, as the Red Army regained the initiative and advanced westward through Ukraine. The Front's senior political commissar was Nikita Khrushchev, who had supported Brezhnev's career since the prewar years. Brezhnev had met Khrushchev in 1931, shortly after joining the Party, and as he continued his rise through the ranks, he became Khrushchev's protégé. At the end of the war in Europe, Brezhnev was chief political commissar of the 4th Ukrainian Front, which entered Prague in May 1945, after the German surrender.


title: Leonid Brezhnev

text: Brezhnev temporarily left the Soviet Army with the rank of Major General in August 1946. He had spent the entire war as a political commissar rather than a military commander. In May 1946, he was appointed the first secretary of the Zaporizhzhia regional party committee, where his deputy was Andrei Kirilenko, one of the most important members of the Dnipropetrovsk Mafia. After working on reconstruction projects in Ukraine, he returned to Dnipropetrovsk in January 1948 as regional first party secretary. In 1950 Brezhnev became a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union's highest legislative body. In July that year he was sent to the Moldavian SSR and appointed Party First Secretary of the Communist Party of Moldova, where he was responsible for completing the introduction of collective agriculture. Konstantin Chernenko, a loyal addition to the "mafia", was working in Moldova as head of the agitprop department, and one of the officials Brezhnev brought with him from Dnipropetrovsk was the future USSR Minister of the Interior, Nikolai Shchelokov. In 1952 he had a meeting with Stalin, after which Stalin promoted Brezhnev to the Communist Party's Central Committee as a candidate member of the Presidium (formerly the Politburo) and made him one of ten secretaries of the Central Committee. Stalin died in March 1953 and, in the reorganization that followed, Brezhnev was demoted to first deputy head of the political directorate of the Army and Navy.


title: Leonid Brezhnev

text: Brezhnev's patron Khrushchev succeeded Stalin as General Secretary, while Khrushchev's rival Georgy Malenkov succeeded Stalin as Chairman of the Council of Ministers. Brezhnev sided with Khrushchev against Malenkov, but only for several years. In February 1954, he was appointed second secretary of the Communist Party of the Kazakh SSR, and was promoted to General Secretary in May, following Khrushchev's victory over Malenkov. On the surface his brief was simple: to make the new lands agriculturally productive. In reality, Brezhnev became involved in the development of the Soviet missile and nuclear arms programs, including the Baykonur Cosmodrome. The initially successful Virgin Lands Campaign soon became unproductive and failed to solve the growing Soviet food crisis. Brezhnev was recalled to Moscow in 1956. The harvest in the years following the Virgin Lands Campaign was disappointing, which would have hurt his political career had he remained in Kazakhstan.


title: Leonid Brezhnev

text: In February 1956 Brezhnev returned to Moscow and was made candidate member of the Politburo assigned in control of the defence industry, the space program including the Baykonur Cosmodrome, heavy industry, and capital construction. He was now a senior member of Khrushchev's entourage, and in June 1957 he backed Khrushchev in his struggle with Malenkov's Stalinist old guard in the Party leadership, the so-called "Anti-Party Group". Following the Stalinists' defeat, Brezhnev became a full member of the Politburo. He became Second Secretary of the Central Committee in 1959, and in May 1960 was promoted to the post of Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, making him the nominal head of state, although the real power resided with Khrushchev as First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party and Premier.


title: Leonid Brezhnev

text: Khrushchev's position as Party leader was secure until about 1962, but as he aged, he grew more erratic and his performance undermined the confidence of his fellow leaders. The Soviet Union's mounting economic problems also increased the pressure on Khrushchev's leadership. Brezhnev remained outwardly loyal to Khrushchev, but became involved in a 1963 plot to remove him from power, possibly playing a leading role. Also in 1963, Brezhnev succeeded Frol Kozlov, another Khrushchev protégé, as Secretary of the Central Committee, positioning him as Khrushchev's likely successor. Khrushchev made him Second Secretary, or deputy party leader, in 1964.


title: Leonid Brezhnev

text: After returning from Scandinavia and Czechoslovakia in October 1964, Khrushchev, unaware of the plot, went on holiday in Pitsunda resort on the Black Sea. Upon his return, his Presidium officers congratulated him for his work in office. Anastas Mikoyan visited Khrushchev, hinting that he should not be too complacent about his present situation. Vladimir Semichastny, head of the KGB, was a crucial part of the conspiracy, as it was his duty to inform Khrushchev if anyone was plotting against his leadership. Nikolay Ignatov, whom Khrushchev had sacked, discreetly requested the opinion of several Central Committee members. After some false starts, fellow conspirator Mikhail Suslov phoned Khrushchev on 12 October and requested that he return to Moscow to discuss the state of Soviet agriculture. Finally, Khrushchev understood what was happening, and said to Mikoyan, "If it's me who is the question, I will not make a fight of it." While a minority headed by Mikoyan wanted to remove Khrushchev from the office of First Secretary but retain him as the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, the majority, headed by Brezhnev, wanted to remove him from active politics altogether.


title: Leonid Brezhnev

text: Brezhnev and Nikolai Podgorny appealed to the Central Committee, blaming Khrushchev for economic failures, and accusing him of voluntarism and immodest behavior. Influenced by Brezhnev's allies, Politburo members voted on 14 October to remove Khrushchev from office. Some members of the Central Committee wanted him to undergo punishment of some kind, but Brezhnev, who had already been assured the office of the General Secretary, saw little reason to punish Khrushchev further. Brezhnev was appointed First Secretary on the same day, but at the time was believed to be a transitional leader, who would only "keep the shop" until another leader was appointed. Alexei Kosygin was appointed head of government, and Mikoyan was retained as head of state. Brezhnev and his companions supported the general party line taken after Stalin's death but felt that Khrushchev's reforms had removed much of the Soviet Union's stability. One reason for Khrushchev's ouster was that he continually overruled other party members, and was, according to the plotters, "in contempt of the party's collective ideals". The Soviet newspaper "Pravda" wrote of new enduring themes such as collective leadership, scientific planning, consultation with experts, organisational regularity and the ending of schemes. When Khrushchev left the public spotlight, there was no popular commotion, as most Soviet citizens, including the intelligentsia, anticipated a period of stabilization, steady development of Soviet society and continuing economic growth in the years ahead.


title: Leonid Brezhnev

text: Political scientist George W. Breslauer has compared Khrushchev and Brezhnev as leaders. He argues they took different routes to build legitimate authority, depending on their personalities and the state of public opinion. Khrushchev worked to decentralize the government system and empower local leadership, which had been wholly subservient; Brezhnev sought to centralize authority, going so far as to weaken the roles of the other members of the Central Committee and the Politburo.


title: Leonid Brezhnev

text: Upon replacing Khrushchev as the party's First Secretary, Brezhnev became the de jure supreme authority of the Soviet Union. However, he was initially forced to govern as part of a troika alongside the country's Premier, Alexei Kosygin, and the party's Second Secretary, Nikolai Podgorny. Due to Khrushchev's disregard for the rest of the Politburo upon combining his leadership of the party with that of the Soviet government, a plenum of the Central Committee in October 1964 forbade any single individual from holding both the offices of General Secretary and Premier. This arrangement would persist until the late 1970s when Brezhnev firmly secured his position as the most powerful figure in the Soviet Union.


title: Leonid Brezhnev

text: During his consolidation of power, Brezhnev first had to contend with the ambitions of Alexander Shelepin, the former Chairman of the KGB and current head of the Party-State Control Committee. In early 1965, Shelepin began calling for the restoration of "obedience and order" within the Soviet Union as part of his own bid to seize power. Towards this end, he exploited his control over both state and party organs to leverage support within the regime. Recognizing Shelepin as an imminent threat to his position, Brezhnev mobilized the Soviet collective leadership to remove him from the Party-State Control Committee before having the body dissolved altogether on 6 December 1965.


title: Leonid Brezhnev

text: At the same time as Shelepin's demotion in December 1965, Brezhnev transferred Podgorny from the Secretariat to the ceremonial post of Chairman of the Presidium. In the ensuing years, Podgorny's base of support was steadily eroded as the proteges he cultivated in his rise to power were forcibly "retired" from the Central Committee. Despite briefly becoming the second most powerful figure in the country when his powers as Presidium Chairman were enhanced in 1973, his influence over Soviet policy continued to decline relative to Brezhnev as the latter shored up his support within the national security apparatus. By 1977, Brezhnev was secure enough in his position to remove Podgorny as head of state as well as a member of the Politburo.


title: Leonid Brezhnev

text: After sidelining Shelepin and Podgorny as threats to his leadership in 1965, Brezhnev directed his attentions to his remaining political rival, Alexei Kosygin. In the 1960s, U.S. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger initially perceived Kosygin to be the dominant leader of Soviet foreign policy in the Politburo. Within the same timeframe, Kosygin was also in charge of economic administration in his role as Chairman of the Council of Ministers. However, his position was weakened following his enactment of several economic reforms in 1965 that collectively came to be known within the Party as the "Kosygin reforms". Due largely to coinciding with the Prague Spring (whose sharp departure from the Soviet model led to its armed suppression in 1968), the reforms provoked a backlash among the party's old guard who proceeded to flock to Brezhnev and strengthen his position within the Soviet leadership. Brezhnev further expanded his authority following a clash with Second Secretary Mikhail Suslov who thereafter never challenged his supremacy within the Politburo.


title: Leonid Brezhnev

text: Brezhnev was adept at politics within the Soviet power structure. He was a team player and never acted rashly or hastily. Unlike Khrushchev, he did not make decisions without substantial consultation from his colleagues, and was always willing to hear their opinions. During the early 1970s, Brezhnev consolidated his domestic position. In 1977, he forced the retirement of Podgorny and became once again Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, making this position equivalent to that of an executive president. While Kosygin remained Premier until shortly before his death in 1980 (replaced by Nikolai Tikhonov as Premier), Brezhnev was the dominant driving force of the Soviet Union from the mid-1970s to his death in 1982.


title: Leonid Brezhnev

text: Brezhnev's stabilization policy included ending the liberalizing reforms of Khrushchev, and clamping down on cultural freedom. During the Khrushchev years, Brezhnev had supported the leader's denunciations of Stalin's arbitrary rule, the rehabilitation of many of the victims of Stalin's purges, and the cautious liberalization of Soviet intellectual and cultural policy, but as soon as he became leader, Brezhnev began to reverse this process, and developed an increasingly authoritarian and regressive attitude.


title: Leonid Brezhnev

text: The trial of the writers Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky in 1966, the first such public trials since Stalin's reign, marked the reversion to a repressive cultural policy. Under Yuri Andropov the state security service (in the form of the KGB) regained some of the powers it had enjoyed under Stalin, although there was no return to the purges of the 1930s and 1940s, and Stalin's legacy remained largely discredited among the Soviet intelligentsia.


title: Leonid Brezhnev

text: By the mid-1970s, there were an estimated 10,000 political and religious prisoners across the Soviet Union, living in grievous conditions and suffering from malnutrition. Many of these prisoners were considered by the Soviet state to be mentally unfit and were hospitalized in mental asylums across the Soviet Union. Under Brezhnev's rule, the KGB infiltrated most, if not all, anti-government organisations, which ensured that there was little to no opposition against him or his power base. However, Brezhnev refrained from the all-out violence seen under Stalin's rule.