As more and more people tried it and became addicted to it, it gained a reputation as a highly dangerous, very addictive drug. The drug's bad reputation combined with stricter laws against sales and possession led to less and less use of cocaine in the first few decades of the twentieth century. Sixty years after it began, cocaine use had practically disappeared by 1930. In the 1960's cocaine again began to be seen as a harmless stimulant. When coca leaves are harvested in Peru and Colombia, they are thrown into pits, chopped, pounded and mixed with gasoline, kerosene, and other chemicals to remove cocaine from the coca leaves.
Cocaine comes out of the leaf in the freebase form.
If it were left in this form for long it would lose its potency, so the cocaine freebase is mixed with other chemicals to convert it into a salt form. The salt form may be shipped long distances or stored for a long time without losing its strength. The salt form is the form used by doctors to produce local anesthesia for minor surgery. Drug abusers know that they can inject the salt form but cannot smoke it. If the drug user wants to smoke cocaine, he mixes the cocaine salt with chemicals to convert it back to its freebase form.