Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. foolish, silly.

1934		H. Sebastian ‘Negro Sl. in Lincoln University’ in AS IX:4 289: cokey Dopey (figuratively or literally); not all there; sleepy-looking; unambitious.
1947		B. Schulberg Harder They Fall (1971) 292: It may sound cokey, but we could go as high as two million with this fight.

2. (also cokie) habituated to cocaine; cite 1998 refers to widespread cocaine use.

1931		Cab Calloway ‘Minnie the Moocher’ 🎵 She messed around with a bloke called Smokie, / She loved him though he was cokey.
1932		New Call (Perth, WA) 21 Apr. 12/8: I recognised the prettiest collection of criminal talent I have ever seen outside a police station. [...] ‘Giggling Dot,’ ‘Cokey Edna,’ and several other notorious women law breakers.
1939		R.L. Bellem ‘Kill That Headline’ in Romantic Detective Feb. 🌐 He’d had a visit from Cokey Joe Breen, who had spilled the facts behind that headline.
1940		S. Longstreet Decade 317: Cokey too, this shamos, and ready to kill on any beef [...] No use knocking against a scut loaded with nose candy.
1949		W.R. Burnett Asphalt Jungle in Four Novels (1984) 206: You’re not talking to some cokie client.
1953		F. Paley Rumble on the Docks (1955) 251: I told you not to bring that cokey bastard.
1956		(con. 1940s) J. Resko Reprieve 206: Jenny the Scow and Cokey Flo boarded up their respective bordellos.
1998		C. Fleming High Concept 121: Those were very cokey times.
2008		R. Price Lush Life 123: Terrific reader [..] Unhappy tables, cokey waiters, who’s passing by out there .

3. (US drugs) addicted to heroin; thus Cokey Joe, a personification of a regular heroin user.

1951		N. Algren Chicago: City On the Make 71: Whiskey-heads and hop-heads, old cokey-joes.
1953		F. Paley Rumble on the Docks (1955) 286: It’s that cokey kid from Herring and White.
1971		R.D. Pharr S.R.O. (1998) 108: ‘This cokey bitch has drunk me broke’.