Coca leaf chewing goes back to 3000 BC in South America, where users believed the plant was a gift from the gods, but the drug's modern history starts in 1855, when chemists first extracted cocaine in powder form. Sigmund Freud promoted it as a treatment for depression and impotence, and in 1886 Atlanta pharmacist John Pemberton mixed it into a new soft drink called Coca-Cola. The film tracks the drug from that respectable beginning through its 1914 ban, the cartel-fueled surge of the 1970s, and the Reagan administration's War on Drugs in the 1980s. Much of the present-day story plays out along the US-Mexico border, where interviews with users, law enforcement officials, and addiction experts lay out how a $30 billion-a-year trade moves product and generates violence. The film pairs that policy and trade history with the personal cost, from recreational users to homeless addicts, treating the epidemic as a problem with a long, tangled backstory rather than a sudden crisis.