DEB ATE PAPERS June 2009 no17

Coca Myths T N Drugs and Democracy Programme I

TRANSNATIONAL

TNI Briefing Series No 2009/1 CO N TE N T S

AUTHORS • Editorial 3 Anthony Henman Pien Metaal • Myth One: Coca and Nutrition 4

EDITORS Martin Jelsma Box: Nutritional value of coca leaf - Harvard Study 7 Amira Armenta

DESIGN • Myth Two: Coca and Alkaloids 7 Jan Abrahim Vos • Myth Three: Coca and Addiction 13 PRINTER Drukkerijj PrimaveraQuint • Myth Four: Amsterdam Coca and the Environment 16 FINANCIAL CONTRIBUTIONS • Myth Five: Coca and Society 20 Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Netherlands) • Final Remarks 22 Foundation Open Society T Institute (FOSI) • Bibliography 23 N Drugs & Conflict Series I CONTACT Transnational Institute No. 1 Europe and Plan Colombia, April 2001 De Wittenstraat 25 1052 AK Amsterdam No. 2 In the Heat of the Debate. Fumigation and Conflict in Colombia, September 2001 Netherlands No. 3 Merging Wars. Afghanistan. Drugs and Terrorism, December Tel: -31-20-6626608 2001 Fax: -31-20-6757176 No. 4 A Failed Balance. Alternative Development and Eradication, [email protected] March 2002 www.tni.org/drugs No. 5 Breaking the Impasse. Polarisation & Paralysis in UN Drug www.ungassondrugs.org Control, July 2002 No. 6 Change of Course. An Agenda for Vienna, March 2003 The contents of this No. 7 Cross Purposes. Alternative Development and Conflict in Colombia, document can be quoted or June 2003 reproduced as long as the No. 8 Transcending Drug Control. Forward Operating Locations in Latin America, September 2003 source is mentioned. TNI No. 9 Drugs and Conflict in Burma (Myanmar). Dilemmas for Policy would appreciate receiving a Responses, December 2003 copy of the text in which this No. 10 Coca or death? Cocalero movements in Peru and Bolivia, April document is used or cited. 2004 No. 11 A Pointless War. Drugs and Violence in Brazil, November 2004 To receive information No. 12 Downward Spiral. Banning Opium in Afghanistan and Burma, about TNI’s publications and July 2005 activities, we suggest that you No. 13 Coca yes, Cocaine, no? Legal Options fot the Coca Leaf, May subscribe to our bi-weekly 2006 bulletin by sending a request No. 14 Paco Under Scrutiny. The Cocaine Base Paste Market in to: [email protected] or registering Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil, October 2006 at www.tni.org No. 15 Losing Ground, Drug Control and War in Afghanistan, December 2006 No.16 Withdrawal Symptoms, Changes in the Southeast Asian drugs Amsterdam, June 2009 market, August 2008 ISSN 1871-3408 All editions of the series are available online in English and Spanish at: www.tni.org/reports/drugs/debate.htm E ditorialT itel

istory has been unjust to the the plant is used to produce its “black gold”. coca leaf, denying it distribu- Every day press accounts around the world tion on a global scale despite use the word coca in their headlines, when its proven value as an energy they refer in fact to cocaine. enhancer, and limiting its poten- tial for widespread use as a healthy alter- Amidst all this confusion, Bolivia’s President native to all sorts of chemical stimulants has recently announced that his country will currently available on the world market. step forward to undo the historical mistake of including the coca leaf in the 1961 Con- The inclusion of the coca leaf in the 1961 vention. Although the claim that coca is part Single Convention’s lists of drugs liable to of the identity and history of the Andean/ abuse, and therefore subject to international Amazon region is unlikely to be questioned control, has not produced the effect origi- by most countries, a possible removal of the nally desired: traditional use - whether by coca leaf from the international control sys- chewing the leaves or drinking them in an tem is still met with considerable scepticism. infusion - is still widespread, though largely The reasons for such a degree of resistance limited to a few countries where such prac- – which we believe to be mistaken and inap- tices have historical antecedents. Potential propriate - have motivated the production demand is high, particularly for coca tea. of this briefing paper The ban of even this innocuous custom is T still one of the demands repeated annually The present issue of Drugs & Conflict in the statements of the INCB, the interpre- intends to debunk and disentangle the most tive body of the UN control system. This prominent myths surrounding the coca leaf. N unreasonable posture has recently led to It aims to clear the air and help steer the a formal request from one government to debate towards a more evidence-based I abrogate the articles of the 1961 Conven- judgement of the issues. Discussion has tion that demand the abolishment of coca been stuck for too long at the point where leaf chewing. it is now, and - sometime in the near future - political decisions will need to be made on Many myths surround the coca leaf. Radically coca’s fate and legal status. opposed views and opinions can be heard in the polemical debates surrounding this Persecuting plants and the people who plant, and those not familiar with the sub- grow them is still a basic ingredient of drug ject are easily lost among all the apparent policies around the world. One Andean contradictions. The debate is politicised and president recently announced he would has become subject to extreme ideologi- like to see farmers that grow these plants cal positioning. For some the coca leaf is incarcerated. This not only constitutes a as addictive as its best-known derivative basic human rights offence, since it aims to cocaine, while others argue that it can punish poor families in search of a viable and cure half the diseases of modern times. For sustainable form of agriculture, but it also some, coca growing is the main cause of demonises innocent plants, and thus Mother environmental degradation, while others Nature herself. claim that coca helps to protect the soil and prevents erosion. Many other examples can Not surprisingly, the grey area between be identified, equally strong in their oppos- extreme positions on the coca leaf offers ing contradictions. sound evidence on which we can form a balanced perspective, and hopefully treat The coca leaf has been used and misused this plant with the respect it deserves. The for many ends, each of them suiting different time has come for humanity to recognise interests and agendas. Even its very name has its past mistakes on this question, and given been appropriated by a soft drinks producer, the chance, to repair them and finally come which still has difficulties in admitting that to its senses.

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extreme, however, there exists an increasingly he myths, both positive and negative, sur- vocal lobby which defends the use of coca not rounding the use and cultivation of coca so much as a stimulant, but as a food supple- leaves represent extreme versions of a ment, and sometimes engages in extravagant continuum of ideas about this psychoac- claims regarding coca’s dietary benefits. tive plant, and in most cases contain elements which are not entirely distant from the truth. The association of coca with malnutrition has By identifying the myths in pairs, each of these a long institutional history, having evolved from marking the extreme end of a given subject the plainly racist prejudices of nineteenth cen- of debate, our aim is to pinpoint the middle tury travellers via the psychiatric establishment ground where a new evidence-based consensus in Lima where coca came to be associated can emerge regarding coca’s undoubted stimu- with poverty, backwardness, and a long list of lant, nutritional and therapeutic properties. The physical and mental “alterations”. Crucially, areas of current concern are the following: such links formed the basis for the condemna- tion of coca chewing in a report presented to 1. Coca and nutrition. (“The use of coca is symp- the international community in 1950, known tomatic of hunger and malnutrition”/ “Coca is a as the report of the Commission of Enquiry on solution to the world’s hunger problem”) the Coca Leaf. This Commission had been given 2. Coca and alkaloids. (“Cocaine can easily be a mandate by an Economic and Social Council T extracted from coca leaves”/ “Coca leaves contain (ECOSOC) resolution 159 (VII) IV on August no cocaine”) 10, 1948, to “investigate the effects of chewing 3. Coca and addiction. (“The use of coca produces the coca leaf and the possibilities of limiting its N a form of drug dependence”/ “The use of coca production and controlling its distribution”. The will cure dependence on cocaine and crack”) resulting document, prepared after a brief visit I 4. Coca and the environment. (“Coca cultivation is to Peru and Bolivia by a group of “experts” devastating the rainforest”/ “Coca is an ideal crop led by Howard B. Fonda, then director of for poor soils in the tropics and will be cultivated the American Pharmaceutical Manufacturers’ everywhere once declared legal”) Association, drew many of its arguments from 5. Coca and society. (“Coca farmers should be identi- the work of the Peruvian psychiatrists Carlos fied as drug traffickers”/ “ Coca farmers only grow Gutiérrez Noriega and Vicente Zapata Ortiz, coca to satisfy traditional indigenous uses”) who claimed: “We have already pointed out that coca diminishes appetite and allows one to live with a minimal food ration. In consequence... coca 1. COCA AND NUTRITION may be one of the factors which condition the poor nutrition of regular users, and poor nutrition is one It has long been common among super- of the factors which favour the toxic effect of the ficial observers to confuse the use of coca drug.” Modern defenders of this school are with an inadequate diet, and thus to claim that going even further by saying: “(flour of) coca leaf coca is in some specific sense responsible for has no nutritional value whatsoever and is toxic malnutrition among the Andean population. for human consumption”. As a justification for the maintenance of cur- rent coca prohibition, this view was restated The malnutrition thesis was subsequently to the international press on publication of the International Narcotics Control Board  Valdizán, H., 1913 “El cocainismo y la raza indígena.” La (INCB) Report for 2007. In his presentation, Crónica Médica (Lima), 15 August 1913. the Board’s President, Philip Emafo, declared  Report of the Commission of Enquiry on the Coca Leaf his personal view that “it is not good for work- May 1950, ECOSOC, Official Records, Fifth Year twelfth session, Special Supplement No.1, Lake Success, New York, July 1950, ing people” to chew coca, since by depriving E/1666 E/CN.7/AC.2/1, page 4, 2nd par. them of hunger it prevents them enjoying “an  Gutierrez Noriega and Zapata Ortiz 1947: 122 appropriate level of nutrition”. At the opposite  Zavaleta, A., 2009 Chief of Investigation of the Peruvian NGO CEDRO Centro de Información y Educación para la  La Razón, 2007, Bolivian newspaper, “La coca genera tensión Prevención del Abuso de Drogas, “Cedro y ONUDD critican entre la ONU y el Gobierno boliviano", 1st March 2007 uso de la hoja de coca”, El Comercio, March 14, 2009.

 Drugs & Conflict N o. 17 - June 2009 C O C A A N D n u TRITIO N repeated and rubber-stamped by the ECOSOC digestive role similar to that of tea or coffee. report, and ultimately served as an important Detailed studies of dietary intake indicate a scientific justification for including coca leaf role for coca in stabilizing blood glucose lev- in Schedule 1 of the United Nations Single els among populations heavily dependent on Convention of 1961, arguing that coca chew- carbohydrates, and thus in palliating – rather ing “inhibits the sensation of hunger, and thus than exacerbating – the nutritional deficien- maintains, by a vicious circle, a constant state of cies produced by inadequate land, income or malnutrition”. In this study, dissenting views environmental resources. A comparison of were absent; in particular, the work of the coca with other major food sources has shown noted Peruvian physician Carlos Monge, who that it is an excellent source of vitamins B1, B2, directed the Institute of Andean Biology in C and E, and in particular of mineral elements Lima and headed the Peruvian Commission such as calcium, potassium and phosphorus.10 on the Coca Leaf, which had been set up in If anything, Dr. Monge’s position was exces- 1949 to cooperate with the ECOSOC mission. sively cautious; his emphasis on the utility of A direct conflict of interests and personali- coca in adapting to life at high altitudes could ties existed between the two commissions, in be interpreted as implying that coca is largely which a central issue concerned the interpreta- superfluous to a diet in the middle valleys, the tion of the coca-and-nutrition argument, and lowlands, or on the coast. Both the present-day which led to an acrimonious exchange in the distribution of the use of coca, and the very anthropological journals America Indígena and extensive archaeological record, demonstrate T Peru Indígena through 1952 and 1953. The Peru- that this is simply not the case. vian Commission made the simple observation that none of the diseases usually associated Having accepted that coca plays an important N with malnutrition - such as pellagra, beriberi, nutritional role in the traditional Andean diet, scurvy or rickets - had ever been present in the it is but a small step to seeing it in a wider I central Andes, a finding which was belittled and contemporary healing capacity, that is, as ultimately ignored by the ECOSOC mission. a crucial ingredient in the restructuring of Meanwhile Dr. Monge’s dissenting report and dietary preferences for a population that has supporting documentation, transmitted by an been over-exposed to the processed food- increasingly exasperated Peruvian Ministry of stuffs known as “junk food”. This perspective, Foreign Affairs at ECOSOC and other UN which has acquired a considerable follow- bodies, remained forever excluded from the ing particularly among the middle classes in official register. In revising the bibliography of urban Peru, stresses the figures contained the ECOSOC study, it becomes clear that not in the often-quoted Harvard study11, which all the relevant literature available at the time compared the nutritional values of coca with of the study was taken into account, a fact other major food crops. Crucially, however, that reinforces the idea that this commission the comparisons were made considering a daily of “enquiry” had been set up with a predeter- intake of 100 grams of each of the different mined view of its ultimate “findings”. plants. While this quantity of fresh maize, for example, would be just a light snack, 100 grams More recent ethnographic accounts have of coca – in leaf or ground flour form – would shown that the use of coca is in no way be well in excess of the daily intake of even perceived as a substitute for food among the most inveterate coquero. Miners in Potosí, traditional users; rather, coca is often chewed whose food taboos do not allow them to take after a meal, when the stomach is full, in a any other sustenance on their 12-hour shifts underground, have been found to consume  United Nations, Economic and Social Council (1950) Offi- cial Records, Fifth year: twelfth session. Special supplement No.1. Report of the Commission of Enquiry on the Coca  Bolton 1976, Burchard 1975. Leaf, May 1950, Lake Success, N.Y., E/1666- E/CN.7/AC.2/1, 10 James, A., Aulick, D., Plowman, T., 1975 “Nutritional Value Page 93, Chapter XIX, D 1 of Coca”, Botanical Museum Leaflets, Harvard University  Monge 1952, 1953 24 (6): 113-119.  See for example, Allen 1988, Carter and Mamani 1986. 11 Duke, Aulick, Plowman 1975

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between 25 and 45 grams of coca leaf daily.12 the human organism. One feature of recent Most agricultural workers use even less, and experiments has been particularly striking: the thus it is disingenuous to use the 100-gram use of coca as a calcium source for geriatric chart as proof of coca’s enormous nutritional populations, many of whom show a pro- potential. nounced intolerance to traditional sources of this mineral, such as diary products.13 There is a further reason why coca is unlikely to become a major food source – its cost. In In the years since coca flour’s popularity began the cultures where it is used traditionally, coca to increase, many column inches of the Lima is not viewed as something to be eaten, but press have been dedicated to trashing the rather as something to be absorbed through argument that coca could be a good source the mucous membranes of the mouth, or of calcium. With absolutely no scientific evi- drunk in the form of an infusion. This privi- dence, authorities have claimed that – although leges its medicinal and stimulant effects, rather calcium is definitely there, and in remarkably than its brute nutritional content, and confers high concentrations (Duke, Aulick, Plowman on coca the status of a “ritual lubricant” or 1975) – this cannot really be assimilated by the “necessary luxury”, which in terms of local human organism. No real reasons are given for income requires a degree of financial sacrifice. this, but – according to the NGO CEDRO – it Of course, this is not a significant issue to the is somehow connected to “intoxication” by T relatively affluent urban consumers who are alkaloids dangerous to human health.14 The the most enthusiastic advocates of coca-as- head of the Faculty of Pharmacy in Lima and food, but it certainly sets limits on the potential Adriana Cordero, the author of the study on N role of coca in ameliorating the nutritional which CEDRO´s warning had been based, went status of poor and marginalized populations. on record to deny such findings and denounce I Only in the actual coca-leaf producing regions, their manipulation by the anti-coca lobby – but where both malnutrition and coca availability predictably, this rectification was given much are major features, could it deliver on its less space than the original scare story. promise to solve world hunger, and even here it would require an inventive new cuisine and The nutritionist Sacha Barrio, one of the few a significant change in eating patterns. media figures in Lima who take a more sanguine view of coca’s benefits, maintains that – among Thus we are confronted with the need to the many factors inhibiting the assimilation of temper an enthusiasm for coca’s undoubted calcium – prominence should be given to the dietary contributions with a cool look at ratio of this mineral and phosphorus, which both the manner it has been consumed over has the capacity of blocking calcium uptake. To the millennia, and the real benefits of cur- be efficiently absorbed, calcium must outweigh rently fashionable innovations in the kitchen. phosphorus by a ratio of 2 to 1 – in coca this In admixtures to grain flours, in pastas, breads, ratio is a comfortable 5:1, which explains the cakes and biscuits, or as an additive to soups many anecdotal accounts of its use in arresting and porridges, few cooks or bakers would osteoporosis and healing broken bones. One recommend more than 5% coca flour in the should also consider, following Baker and Maz- total mix. In this proportion, it simply cannot be ess (1963), the contribution of calcium made ingested in quantities likely to make a serious by the alkaline admixture used in traditional impression at the level of basic carbohydrates, coca chewing, as well as the well-documented oils and proteins. However, its contribution in assimilation of vitamins established by Collazos terms of vitamins, and particularly of mineral (1965) - both of which add weight to the idea elements such as calcium, deserves recognition – both in supplying these elements where they 13 In an interview the Peruvian newspaper La República, are lacking in the diet, and in terms of boosting September 27, 2004, had with several nutritionists, various their bioavailability and ultimate absorption by examples were given of effective treatment for several geriatric diseases such as chronicle anaemia, depression, osteartrosis, urinary infections, and as a general immu- 12 Carter, W. and Mamani, M., 1986 Coca in Bolivia, La Paz, nity/defence enhancer. Juventud. 14 in Mundo Médico, September 2005

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Harvard Study - Nutritional Value of Coca Leaf (Duke, Aulick, Plowman 1975)

A study done by a team at Harvard University found that the coca leaf contains a rich store of nutrients, more than many other well-known food plants. These were analysed individually in the full study, and then lumped together for a general comparison, which we publish here:

COCA Average FOODS USED FOR COMPARISON PURPOSES: (100 grs) nutrients of 30 food 10 CEREALS plants Amaranthus caudatus, Oriza sativa, Avena sati- (100 grs) va, Chenopodium pallidicaule, Chenopodium quinoa, Hordeum vulgare, Secale cereale, Coix Calories 305 279 lachryma jobi, Zea mays and Triticum aesti- Proteins 19.9 g. 11.4 g. cum. Fats 3.3 g. 7.9 g. 10 VEGETABLES Carbohydrates 44.3 g. 37.9 g. Canna edulis, Capsicum spp., Allium sativum, Calcium (mg) 1749 99 Arracacha xanthorriza, Ipomoea batatas, Cyclan- Phosphorus (mg) 637 270 thera pedata, Cucurbita maxima, Allium cepa, T Iron (mg) 26.8 3.6 Brassica oleracea and Tropacolum tuberosum, Vitamin A (iu) 10000 135 10 FRUITS N Vitamin B1 (mg) 0.58 0.58 Persea americana, Ananas cosmosus, Musa Vitamin PP (mg) 3.7 2.2 sapientum, Cocos nucifera, Passiflora mollissi- I Vitamin C (mg) 1.4 13.0 ma, Annona cherimolia, Prunus persica, Frega- ria spp., Annona muricata, and Ficus carica. Vitamin B2 (mg) 1.73 0.18

of coca as a modest but reliable source of 2. COCA AND ALKALOIDS valuable micro-nutrients. The extreme positions in this discussion In conclusion, the use of coca leaves is neither have an even longer and more ideologically a cause of malnutrition, nor a total panacea for charged genealogy than those in the coca and the dietary deficiencies produced by imbal- nutrition debate. With Albert Niemann’s dis- ances in modern eating patterns. It has a covery of cocaine in 1859, a considerable body significant role to play as a nutritional supple- of scientific opinion took the view that coca’s ment, and this is equally useful in many differ- properties were entirely attributable to the ent population groups and many diverse diets presence of this alkaloid. The young Sigmund and cuisines. However, it cannot be too often Freud was of this persuasion: “The experiments stated that the principal benefits enjoyed by carried out recently with the cocaine prepared by coca consumers reside less in the nutritional Merck in Darmstadt alone justify the claim that realm than in that of its well-documented, cocaine is the true agent of the coca effect...”15 historically attested applications as a stimu- A counter-current emerged around observ- lant and herbal medicine. And here, it would ers of traditional coca use in the Andes, such be dishonest to ignore the role played by its as Henry Rusby, who argued forcefully: “With undoubted alkaloid content. certain restrictions it may be said that the proper- ties of cocaine, remarkable as they are, lie in an

15 Freud 1884, in Byck 1974:53

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altogether different direction from those of coca as Dependence undertook a pre-review of the it has been reported to us from South America”.16 case against the coca leaf to decide whether This received the enthusiastic backing of the it should be critically reviewed for reschedul- nascent industry in “whole coca” products, ing, but finally ruled against this: “the coca leaf such as Vin Mariani and the early Coca-Cola, is appropriately scheduled … since cocaine is and – with the publication of William G Mor- readily extractable from the leaf.”19 In its first timer’s Peru: A History of Coca in New York in chapter, the 2008 INCB report confirmed this 1901 – these interests seemed poised to set perspective, arguing that the WHO Expert the record straight. Medical opinion, however, Committee on Drug Dependence had decided moved decisively in the opposite direction, against recommending any change of control and the progressive criminalization of cocaine measures on the grounds of extractability. led finally to coca being tarred with the same Literally quoting from the WHO document brush, and its industrial uses restricted to of 1993 they argue: flavourings with the alkaloids removed. “The position of coca leaf in Schedule I of the Many present-day attitudes are traceable to 1961 Convention is clear: non-medical consump- this early phase of the debate; on the one hand, tion of the coca leaf without prior extraction of drug control bureaucracies constantly cite the its principal active alkaloids, including cocaine, is “easy extraction” of cocaine as a reason to prohibited. In 1992, following a request from the T continue keeping coca leaves under the strictest government of Bolivia to examine the issue, the schedules of control, while defenders of coca WHO Expert Committee on Drug Dependence use formulas such as “coca is not cocaine”, or decided against recommending any change of N “coca is to cocaine what the grape is to wine”. A control measures on the grounds of extract- degree of clarity is absent in both these extreme ability: “coca leaf is appropriately scheduled... I positions. The analogy with wine is particularly since cocaine is readily extractable from the inappropriate, since the fermentation of alcohol leaf ”.20 from naturally occurring plant sugars provides no parallel whatsoever to the extraction of naturally The pre-review stage, however, appears to have occurring alkaloids from an organic plant source. been used to prevent a more thorough review Simple facts cannot be denied: chemical assays of the scientific evidence. This defensiveness on have shown the cocaine content of coca leaves the part of the WHO Expert Committee on to range between 0.25% and 0.77%.17 More Drug Dependence is perhaps understandable: recent figures used in UNODC’s crop monitor an examination of the original rulings which survey, and based on the US Justice Department supported the 1961 Single Convention would and Drugs Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) show that little or nothing was made of the Operation Breakthrough show a cocaine alkaloid extractability argument at the time, and the content ranging between 0,52 % and 0,73 %.18 arguments which were then used – coca’s links with malnutrition, or its potential to This point is rather crucial, as the presence cause addiction – today have limited scientific of cocaine in the leaf provides the principal credibility. In other words, the grounds for rationale for current attempts by the drug con- maintaining coca leaf in Schedule 1 of the Single trol authorities to maintain coca in Schedule 1, Convention have been changed, but – this is the replacing the original arguments regarding important point – without a critical review on the likelihood of coca consumption causing the part of the WHO Expert Committee on malnutrition or a form of drug dependence. In Drug Dependence. Here, defensiveness verges 1992 the WHO Expert Committee on Drug on dishonesty, and even implies a degree of

16 Rusby, 1888 19 WHO Expert Committee on Drug Dependence, Twenty 17 Plowman & Rivier, 1983. Eight Report, 836, Technical Report Series, Geneva, 1993, 18 DEA, cited in Drug Availability Estimates in the Unit- p.37 ed States, Drug Availability Steering Committee, 20 Report of the International Narcotics Control Board December 2002 (NCJ 197107) http://www.whitehouse- for 2008, United Nations Publications, New York, 2009 drugpolicy.gov/publications/pdf/drugavailability.pdf (E/INCB/2008/1), Chapter 1, p 7.

 Drugs & Conflict N o. 17 - June 2009 C O C A A N D ALKALOIDS professional misconduct: the failure to fulfil a There is of course no question about the basic scientific role entrusted in good faith to the fact that cocaine can be extracted from the WHO by the international community. coca leaf. The important point, however, is whether this provides sufficient justification for According to the guidelines for WHO review the strict levels of control attached to Schedule of psychoactive substances under international 1, and whether alkaloid extraction is actually as control, the Expert Committee must assess easy as present-day authorities would like us to each substance in terms of its potential for believe. Efficient extraction requires a degree abuse and its dependence-producing capability; of chemical expertise and a series of elements the likelihood of it causing public health and – alkalis such as cement or calcium carbonate, social problems; and its usefulness in medical leaching agents such as boric, sulphuric and therapy. On any of these counts, coca leaf would hydrochloric acids, and precipitants such as clearly merit a different status to cocaine, and potassium permanganate – which are hardly here lies the crucial distinction which current household staples. And this is only to arrive at scheduling fails to recognise. According to the a semi-refined coca paste.23 The conversion mandate of the WHO Expert Committee on of this into cocaine hydrochloride or cocaine Drug Dependence, free-base (“crack”) any substance sched- demands the care- uled in the 1961 ful handling of vola- Convention must be Here, defensiveness verges on tile solvents such as T examined in terms ether and acetone, of “whether the sub- dishonesty, and even implies as well as repeated stance has morphine- a degree of professional washing, leaching and N like, cocaine-like, or precipitating of the misconduct: the failure to fulfil cannabis-like effects final product. I or is convertible into a a scientific role entrusted in scheduled substance Combined with the having such effects. If good faith to the WHO by the fact that cocaine so, it then determines, international community extraction is only in accordance with viable, in practical Article 3, paragraph terms, when favoured 3(iii) of that Conven- by a ready supply of tion, if the substance: (1) is liable to similar leaves, this explains the current concentration abuse and productive of similar ill-effects as the of primary processing in the coca-produc- substances in Schedule I or Schedule II; or (2) is convertible into a substance already in Schedule 23 Confusingly, coca base is included as a synonym for coca I or Schedule II”.21 The question remains if leaf in the ‘Yellow List’ of synonyms used for substances scheduled under the 1961 Convention, while coca paste cocaine production should be classified as a is included as a synonym for cocaine. Coca paste and coca “conversion”; this is perhaps not the correct base are used to refer to the intermediate products between or exact term, it being merely a matter of coca leaf and cocaine hydrochloride. More often in English the terms coca paste and cocaine base are used to refer concentration/extraction of the cocaine con- to two steps in the process. The paste, extracted from the tent in the coca leaf. According to the WHO leaves using kerosene, two acids and an alkaline substance, guidelines22 “a substance is convertible if it is is subsequently precipitated with potassium permanganate, repeatedly washed with a solvent, an acid and an alkali to of such a kind as to make it, by the case of the diminish the presence of other alkaloids and impurities such process and by the yield, practicable and profitable as kerosene, leading to a more refined cocaine base which can have a high level of purity (up to 85% cocaine sulphate). for a clandestine manufacturer to transform the Especially in Colombia the terms have become blurred since substance in question into controlled drugs”. more farmers started to sell cocaine base instead of coca paste. In Bolivia and Peru, it seems, the market of intermedi- ate products is still dominated by coca paste and the step 21 to cocaine base is usually only made at the same lab where WHO/EDM/QSM/2000.5, Guidelines for the WHO review it is transformed into cocaine hydrochloride. In Spanish the of dependence-producing psychoactive substances for interna- most commonly used terms are pasta básica de cocaína tional control, Geneva 2000, par. 33, p. 6. (for coca paste), and base de cocaína or pasta lavada (for 22 Draft WHO guidelines, proposed revision document, June cocaine base); both can be referred to as sulfato de cocaína to 2007, page 13, Para 51. distinguish from the end-product clorhidrato de cocaína.

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ing regions of the world. In order to avoid trade. There remains, however, the question excessive wastage in the production process, of any possible extraction of cocaine from coca leaves must be processed in quantities products at the retail level, and here a useful above 100 kilos, which could yield, at best, comparison could be made with street prices approximately 1 kilogram of coca paste, or for the refined illicit product. somewhere in the range 400-700 grams of cocaine hydrochloride. At the prices at which In Europe, for example, a pure gram of cocaine whole sun-dried coca leaves, and semi-proc- retails for a minimum of $80 in the Iberian essed products such as coca teas and flours, peninsula, to an average of $120 in the central presently retail in the legal consuming markets economies, and a maximum of $200 in the in the Andes, it simply is not economical to relatively small markets to the North and East. extract alkaloids from these sources. In Lima, Taking the $120 figure, and deducting 25% to for example, coca leaves and coca flour retail at account for likely wastage and processing costs, an average of US$ 13 per kilogram – a supply of coca products would have to retail in Western 100 kilos would therefore cost approximately Europe at an equivalent of $90 per gram of US$ 1,300. One kilogram of coca paste whole- cocaine content, in order not to undercut sales locally at between US$ 300 and US$ 600, the market and make small-scale clandestine that is, at between a quarter and a half of the processing worthwhile. Allowing for an average cost of the leaves alone, without considering 0.5% extraction rate, this would mean that 200g. T additional expenditure on chemicals, labour, of coca would have to retail at an equivalent of and 'protection'. In contrast, farm-gate prices $90. While this would be rather pricey for tea for sun-dried coca leaves on the illegal market bags, for instance ($0.45 per 1g. bag), it would N remained relatively stable in Peru between be quite reasonable for such a product as coca 2001-2007 at an average of US$ 2.5/kg, accord- flour, or prepared mambe/ypadu ($11.25 for a I ing to UNODC figures. In the hypothetical 25g. spice jar). The benefit of this to government case of coca becoming more widely available finances would be considerable, as something world-wide, this margin of economic disincen- in the range of 80-90% of the final price would tive would be likely to increase, in line with the be represented by taxation, part of which could expanding transport, storage, taxation, labour be applied to the funding of controls and drug and marketing costs of any legal coca trade. education programmes. Why process crack from tea bags if it ends up costing the consumer several times more than Furthermore, such comparisons are made the product already available on the street? without considering additional expenditure on chemical precursors, and the need for profits Of course, considerable attention would have or “mark-up”24. Cocaine production would to be directed at the logistics and mathematical pricing details of such a supply system. Who- 24 The mark-up is the economic reward paid to smugglers, lesale prices for illicit cocaine in the principal wholesalers and retailers of cocaine, for their work. It is presumed to be equal to the sum of the opportunity cost consuming countries vary a great deal – ranging of their time; a premium to offset the risk of legal sanction between US $10,000 and $25,000 in Argen- and their vulnerability to theft and coercion by other illegal tina, Brazil, Venezuela and Mexico, $25,000 actors; monopoly profits that may accrue to established distribution organizations (and the cost they incur to deter and $60,000 in North America, $50,000 and potential new arrivals); the cost of other goods and services $120,000 in Europe and Asia – and legitimate (such as transportation equipment and storage) which they purchase; and payments they make to evade law enforce- coca prices would have to reflect this reality, ment.From Pierre Kopp, “Political economy of illegal drugs”, favouring markets closer to the sources of London: Routledge. 2004:20. According to a report com- supply. At least initially, controls at the level of missioned by the UK Drug Policy Commission, substantial mark-ups and profit margins have been established as occur- importation, packaging and distribution above ring along the supply chain. The report concluded that in the certain quantities (for example shipments UK there was a mark up of 69% between cocaine entering exceeding 100 kg) would probably require a the UK and the UK street price. See: Tim McSweeney, Paul J. Turnbull and Mike Hough, Tackling Drug Markets and system of stringent fiscalization, including pre- Distribution Networks in the UK, Institute for Criminal Policy export notifications and end-use certificates, Research, School of Law, King’s College London, July 2008, available at http://www.ukdpc.org.uk/resources/Drug_Mar- thus preventing diversion in the wholesale kets_Full_Report.pdf

10 Drugs & Conflict N o. 17 - June 2009 C O C A A N D ALKALOIDS remain a penalised offence, and illegal activities able fraction of the leaf’s total alkaloid content usually only flourish when profit margins are – they employ the more technically correct high. The example given here would not leave term methyl ester of benzoylecgonine25, and any such profit margin for the manufacturer point to the existence of many other non-crys- or street dealer, and thus price differences and tallisable ecgonines, which are washed out in profit margins would in practice have to be the illicit transition from coca paste to cocaine significantly greater before any illicit cocaine hydrochloride, or converted to cocaine proper production based on licit retail coca products in more sophisticated laboratories, using the is likely to occur. Nevertheless, were unrea- “ecgonine method” first patented by the Ger- sonably large retail purchases to be detected man company Farbwerke, and used from 1900 by the monitoring system, the introduction of onwards by the Nederlandsche Cocainefabriek licensing, rationing, and prescribing methods in Amsterdam to process coca leaves from might have to be contemplated. But thought Java.26 Ecgonine is a scientific term entirely must be given to the fact that excessively lacking the ideological charge of the word stringent controls, or excessively inflated pri- cocaine, and thus the separation between leaf ces, would have the effect of undermining the and alkaloid is given a spurious air of scientific whole purpose of introducing such products, legitimacy. This separation, however, collapses namely, the re-direction of demand for illicit when it is pointed out that what is commonly cocaine towards less harmful natural forms called cocaine is nothing other than a prepared of the drug. salt (hydrochlorate) of the very same methyl T ester of benzoylecgonine. It appears rather obvious, therefore, that the arguments regarding the “easy extraction” of This is not to deny that the other ecgonines N coca alkaloids are not based on any serene – and a related group of compounds called analysis of the likelihood of domestic cocaine hygrines – may have a significant role in mod- I production across the globe, but rather on the erating, altering or expanding the effects of the need to perpetuate an ideological framework cocaine contained in the coca leaf. Examina- which justifies the continued prohibition of tions of the blood of coca and cocaine users, natural coca products. It is unfortunate that like urine testing, tend to show up ecgonine those who would defend the legalization metabolites – rather than cocaine – which of these products fall into a very similar, if makes it difficult to establish whether a per- reversed, ideological trap: that of projecting an son has smoked crack or drunk coca-leaf tea. idea of coca which has absolutely nothing to do Ciuffardi (1948), however, claimed to detect with its principal alkaloid, cocaine. Coca no es cocaine in the blood of coca chewers, and the cocaína has become an article of faith in large undoubted anaesthesia in the mouth produced areas of the Andes, and is often interpreted by coca chewing must be due to absorption to mean that coca does not contain cocaine, of this alkaloid, as Burchard (1975) asserts a substance that only emerges as the result that ecgonine has absolutely no anaesthetic of the corrupt alchemy of Western imperial- properties. More research definitely needs ist scientists with no understanding of coca’s to be carried out in this area, as whole plant traditional role. Various strands of misunder- compounds are clearly more complex in their standing are present here, and they deserve to pharmacology than straightforward single be disentangled if we are to be able to move alkaloids. While avoiding a dogmatic position forward in our understanding of the plant. on this issue, current evidence seems to sup- port the view that coca differs from cocaine In the first place there is a bit of fine hair-split- principally in its rate and route of ingestion, ting on the part of organic chemists interested rather than in the observable pharmacological in maintaining their monopoly of the definition effects of their respective chemical structures. of coca’s molecular structure. Rather than use In metaphorical terms, coca chewing produces the common word cocaine – which since its inception has been a form of layman’s short- 25 Name used in yellow List 1961 Convention hand, used to describe the principal, crystallis- 26 M de Kort 1999: 129

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a slow and constant “drip” of alkaloids in the ing blood glucose levels and correcting the blood stream, which can be maintained for imbalances resulting from a high-carbohydrate hours without causing irritation. Snorting, diet, and the stress of hypoxia due to living at smoking or injecting cocaine represent pro- high altitudes. They were particularly keen to gressively faster “rushes”, peaks of stimulation dissociate coca chewers from any subjective which are followed by physical exhaustion experience of what they termed “eupho- and mental distress. These distinctions clearly ria”, and greatly chastised their students for require further investigation; what remains chewing excessive quantities of coca leaves as a focus of interest is the way in which the and reporting that they “got high”. Though relevant arguments are used to support a perhaps understandable in the context of radical separation in the nature of the effects what was then a sudden renaissance in the of coca and cocaine. use of illicit cocaine in the United States, this demonstrated little ethnographic sensibility Again, the primacy of an ideological need to in grasping indigenous cognitive categories distinguish between these two forms of the akin to the English word “euphoria”, which in drug must be understood in its historical Andean cultures may be experienced in quite context. After a period (roughly 1900-1960) in a different way.28 which it was the rule in official circles to It is relatively easy, T strictly equate coca therefore, to identify and cocaine, the Current evidence seems to where the fault lines advent of the UN support the view that coca occur in the discus- N Single Convention sion concerning the produced an almost differs from cocaine principally cocaine content in I immediate need to in its rate and route of coca leaves. On the correct the balance, ingestion, rather than in the one hand there is the at least in serious observable pharmacological traditional Western scientific circles. view, enshrined in Picking up where effects of their respective the UN Single Con- Carlos Monge had chemical structures vention, which strict- left off, the Peru- ly equates coca with vian neurosurgeon cocaine, and treats Fernando Cabieses both in exactly the (1946, 1992)27 defended the metabolic and same way. In contrast, there is a school of therapeutic benefits of the traditional use of thought, which has always stressed the dif- coca leaf, setting up an Institute of Traditional ferences between coca and cocaine, and has Medicine within the Ministry of Health in often – misguidedly, perhaps– sought to identify Lima. Based on Montesinos (1965), who first the crucial distinction in a contrast between observed the hydrolysis of cocaine into ecgo- an alkaloid and the more complex chemical nine in the process of digestion, the American composition of the leaf. This has led to the anthropologists Burchard (1975) and Bolton extreme position of denying that coca contains (1976) proposed an “ecgonine model” to any cocaine at all, and seriously undermined explain the effects of coca; in their view, most attempts to understand the real differences cocaine was degraded to simpler ecgonines between these two substances: one a single in the chewing process, and thus the impact alkaloid with a clear molecular structure, and of stimulation on the central nervous system the other a plant with a complex and still was greatly diminished. What remained was poorly-understood array of mineral nutrients, the broad metabolic assistance which ecgo- essential oils, and varied compounds with nine affords to the body functions, stabiliz- greater or lesser pharmacological effects, one of which happens to be the alkaloid cocaine. 27 Fernando Cabieses: ‘La acción antifatigante de la cocaína y la habitación a la coca en el Perú‘ ; Anales de la Facultad de Medicina, XXIX, 4, P.316-367 28 See in Henman, 2008: 61-65

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In public discussion of these different forms of and solely governed by the one passionate desire the drug, it has not often been recognized that for the drug, besides which everything else in life the clearly demonstrable, slow assimilation of is of inferior value.”29 cocaine through coca chewing actually provides a stronger argument in defence of traditional Though based on absolutely no first-hand custom than the scientifically untenable idea experience, Lewin’s authority was such that that coca contains, or releases into the human this view was adopted uncritically by the organism, absolutely no cocaine at all. medical establishment, and particularly by a growing psychiatric profession. This was true even in countries like Peru, which had 3. COCA AND ADDICTION direct contact with traditional coca users and a respectable literature on the therapeutic The opposing positions on the subject uses of coca going back to the founder of of coca’s relation with dependent drug habits modern Peruvian medicine, Hipólito Unanue arose first in the 1880s, when Sigmund Freud (1794). By the 1930s a school had emerged – among others – recommended cocaine as a in the Lima Faculty of Medicine denouncing cure for what had recently been identified as what they chose to call cocaísmo or cocamanía, the scourge of “morphinism”. Prior to this date, and – combining this with the malnutrition coca had been alternately decried and praised argument – this group identified an evident in almost equal measure, as a “foul custom” and pressing need “...to free a people from the T or a wondrous panacea, but nobody had ever slavery of an addictive drug.”30 It was in order suggested that it caused any form of what today to respond to this initiative that the ECOSOC we would call addiction. In a sense, the failure mission of 1949 disembarked in the Andes, N of cocaine to deliver on its promise to cure quite confident that its findings would confirm morphinism led to its being condemned by the grave form of drug dependence which the I association, and soon “cocainism” was added psychiatrists in Lima had already announced to to the list of the new chemical dependencies. the world. It is a mystery why such a fictitious Thomas Szasz (1975) pointed out that the threat was given such a degree of prominence successive editions of Emil Kraepelin´s classic in the immediate post World War II period, manual Psychiatry only began to incorporate, and at a time of an almost complete absence in the list of “chronic intoxications”, cocaine of cocaine on the world illicit market, but in 1891, adding coca itself finally in 1899. This this probably had something to do with the manual was read by the founding father of competition which coca leaves offered to the Peruvian psychiatry, Hermilio Valdizán (1913), American pharmaceutical industry – whose who - from the comfortable distance of Italy, representative, Howard B Fonda, presided over where he was then studying – fired the first the ECOSOC mission. modern broadside against the traditional use of coca, denouncing it as a form of “cocainism”. In In fact, on close examination, the ECOSOC this way ideas that had first been developed to report never concluded unequivocally that explain opiate habits were transferred uncriti- coca chewing was a form of addiction at all. cally – first to cocaine, and then ultimately to The head of the rival Peruvian Commission, the coca leaf. The most popular early twenti- Carlos Monge (1952), made this ironic com- eth-century medical manual on the effects of ment on the subject: “From a medical point of drugs, Louis Lewin’s Phantastica, thus described view, there appear to be two irreducible clinical the users of coca leaf: positions: those who believe that coca is a cause of addiction, and those who deny it. A third must be “Physically and morally they behave like opium- added: that of the members of the UN commission, smokers. A cachectic state appears, with extreme who maintain that it is not an addiction, but should emaciation accompanied by a gradual change in be treated as such since it is a pernicious habit.” demeanour. They are old men before they are adult. They are apathetic, useless for all the more 29 Lewin 1924, in Byck 1974:244 serious purposes of life, subject to hallucinations, 30 Gutiérrez Noriega and Zapata Ortiz, 1947:12

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The confusion was obvious to observers at On this basis, coca – though used by millions the time, but the absence of scientific backing without any obvious deleterious effect – was did not prevent the WHO Expert Commit- declared a powerfully addictive drug with no tee on Drug Dependence from ruling twice, known therapeutic or industrial uses, and in 1952 and 1953, that coca chewing should placed on Schedule 1 of the 1961 UN Single indeed be considered a form of “cocainism”. Convention. All without a single field study As Cáceres (2007: 48) has pointed out, the ever having been carried out among even the ubiquitous Argentine anti-coca campaigner smallest population of coca “addicts”. P.O.Wolff played a key role in this develop- ment: if in 1949 he had drawn up the plainly It is therefore understandable that the Andean biased and incomplete bibliography appended and Amazonian peoples who use coca feel to the ECOSOC report, by 1952 while Chief themselves to have been ignored and even of the Addiction Producing Drugs Section of insulted by the international scientific commu- the WHO he served as the secretary of the nity, as well as humiliated by UN bureaucracies WHO Expert Committee, which had to pass which call on them, in the inimitable language sentence on the coca addiction argument. of the Single Convention, to “phase out” what From a supposedly neutral researcher he had they consider a healthy and ancestral custom. It progressed to the position of judging his own is also significant that there has been almost no thesis – a judgement that, although lacking in attempt since 1953 to provide serious scientific T even a minimal scientific consensus, formed the corroboration for the thesis of coca addiction, basis for coca’s inclusion in List 1 of the 1961 for to do so would invite almost certainly a con- Single Convention. 31 clusion to the contrary, and thus undermine the N entire basis of international coca prohibition. By This clearly circular, ethnocentric recycling the 1960s the ideological thrust of anti-coca I of negative representations of the coca habit campaigns had returned to the field of malnutri- provides a breathtaking example of the ideo- tion (e.g. Buck et al. 1968), where it remains to logical functions of bad science, and deserves this day, incorporating as new and supplemental to be underlined here. First, Europeans who justifications the threat of narcotráfico, the envi- had never witnessed coca chewing declared ronmental cost of coca production, and more it to be a form of addiction strictly equivalent recently, the ready extractability of cocaine from to opiate dependence. Next, these declara- natural coca products. tions were re-edited, with minor alterations, by medical colleagues in Lima who restricted Subsequent researchers have found it very their studies to a dozen prison inmates, an difficult to locate the original 1950 ECOSOC unstated number of “Indians from Huancayo”, Commission document33, and the bureauc- and copious intravenous injections of cocaine racy clearly does not want it put under any in rats and dogs. Significantly, the principal degree of scientific scrutiny. The unpublished text on this question32 contradicts itself in WHO/UNICRI coca and cocaine study of several passages as to whether or not coca 1992-434 finally demolished what remained really produces addiction, probably due to the of the coca-addiction argument, and this may fact that the authors never actually observed have been one of the reasons why its publica- coca chewing in a natural setting. No matter, tion was blocked by the US ambassador at the their requests for “help” from the international annual World Health Assembly. In recent years, community were generously taken up by a even studies unsympathetic to traditional coca burgeoning narcotics bureaucracy, which then use – such as the 2004 DEVIDA/INEI survey proceeded to cite the studies in Lima as evi- in Peru – have tended to skirt the issue com- dence for a theory adopted a priori, “made to pletely, treating it as a thing of the past and measure” for the purposes of coca prohibition. stating unequivocally:

33 Download at: http://www.ungassondrugs.org/images/sto- 31 WHO, Technical report Series 57, March 1052, section ries/cocainquiry-e.pdf 6.2, page 10. 34 Download at: http://www.tni.org/docs/ 32 Idem; 62-69,129-130 200703081409275046.pdf?

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“...it has recently been accepted that the con- leaf, often the easily consumed, powdered sumption of coca leaves does not affect the preparation known as mambe in Spanish health of its users nor produce problems of and ypadú in Brazilian Portuguese – recently excessive use or patterns of substance abuse, introduced to the English language as e.coca physiological habituation, moral degradation, by the London author and historian Mike Jay. behavioural aberration, etc., such as one often Systematic experimentation by medical doc- observes in the use of illegal drugs.”35 tors has included projects by Theobaldo Llosa (2007) in Lima and by Jorge Hurtado (1997) Thus even those who continue to support the at the psychiatric hospital in La Paz. Though status quo, and would prefer the use of this lacking the panoply of data collection which leaf to be phased out by the broad advance would allow a solid scientific case to be made of urban modernity and disdain for primitive for this form of intervention, preliminary custom lay the myth of coca addiction to rest. results are undoubtedly encouraging and Modernity, however, has a knack of cutting both bode well for the future. It may also be that ways, and so we find – in the most unlikely set- the cocaine-using culture is beginning to move tings – a revival of interest in a quite opposite towards less intense, softer or “light” pat- role for coca, now as a treatment for addic- terns of consuming the drug, as has recently tions, precisely the been documented in aspect that intrigued a doctoral thesis in Freud in the early Brazil by Oswaldo T 1880s. In today’s Even those who continue to Fernández.36 version, the object support the status quo, and is not so much opi- At this point it is N ate dependence, as would prefer the use of this leaf important to distin- the types of com- to be phased out by the broad guish between two I pulsive consumption advance of urban modernity different versions that characterize and disdain for primitive of the claim of coca cocaine use, partic- as a substitute for ularly in its smok- custom lay the myth of coca cocaine. The first able forms such as addiction to rest is that exemplified crack and coca paste. by the practices of This approach was Llosa and Hurtado, first suggested by who use whole coca Andrew Weil (1978) in a paper on Coca Leaf products – capsules, powders, drinks, and as a Therapeutic Agent, where he recommended lozenges, even actual leaves – as a form of its use “As a substitute stimulant to wean users treatment for various forms of compulsive of amphetamines and cocaine from those drugs, cocaine consumption. This is unlikely to work which are more dangerous and have much higher in every case, and may take considerable time potentials for abuse.” to become accepted as a complete substitute by the person undergoing treatment. However, The last three decades have seen a degree of it may have an important role to play as a form preliminary experimentation with this idea, of intermediate detoxification: allowing com- much of it at the level of self-medication. pulsive cocaine users to get up and go about Few would claim that coca is a completely their business in day time, while using coca, and satisfactory substitute for all forms of cocaine limiting the frequency and length of their binges consumption, and it certainly is not an instant on the refined alkaloid. In this way, coca could solution for what health officials describe serve as a means of gradually reducing cocaine as the “cocaine problem”. Anecdotally, one intake, and thus bringing it under a degree of hears of many ex-users of cocaine who have personal control. In the long term, it may also progressed to the use of various forms of coca

36 Oswaldo Francisco Ribas Lobos Fernández, doctoral the- 35 Rospigliosi 2004:21R sis, Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), 2007; “Coca Light?”

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lead to the complete substitution of cocaine than the coca leaf, is not itself the leading agent by less stressful organic coca products. responsible for the present-day impasse. Since at least the 1980s, therefore, there has been The second aspect has less to do with individu- a consistent effort – beginning with the US al patterns of consumption, than with a gradual State Department, picked up by the UN drug sea change in the whole culture associated control agencies, and now championed most with the use of cocaine. As the population vociferously by the Colombian Government which led the renaissance in the use of this – to link the growing of coca with widespread drug in the 1970s and 1980s, begins to age, environmental degradation, baptized as “eco- many are either ceasing or severely curtailing cide”. The slogan of the campaign currently their consumption, in a pattern of “maturing doing the rounds in the European Union is out” which was first described in the sociologi- emblematic: “Awareness about cocaine’s ecocide cal literature among heroin users in the United in Colombia: Shared Responsibility.”37 States. A similar phenomenon has been docu- mented in the declining consumption curves There are a number of observations that are among cocaine users in Amsterdam (Cohen & pertinent to the real extent of the “threat” Sas 1994) and Barcelona (Diaz 1998). Part of posed by coca cultivation in tropical South this process could well be hastened and sup- America. First of these is that the total defor- ported by the possibility of replacing cocaine estation observed for coca production in the T with less abrasive coca products, softer forms last thirty years is very difficult to calculate of pharmacological delivery, and more delayed, with any real exactitude. Colombia alone longer-lasting and milder effects. claims to have eradicated over two million N hectares of coca in the last ten years38, but A flourishing market in natural stimulants, much of this has been repeated fumigation of I including various coca products, could have the same areas – or even, tragically, of veg- a preventive effect in reducing the number of etation cover which contained no coca at all. people turning to more concentrated drugs Indeed, several alternative development pro- - including the various amphetamines, as well grammes have also been targeted. Exasperated as cocaine itself. Here lies a role for coca crop-substitution experts struggle perennially which has hardly yet been explored: a progres- with enormous differences in the estimates of sive, long-term, sustained re-education of the total areas dedicated to coca in UNODC and whole cocaine consuming market, away from US State Department briefings, knowing that chemical extracts and back to forms inspired the figures are often blatantly manipulated for by the model of traditional use. Though only political ends (Cabieses 2007). What remains a distant ideal at present, this would be the is a realistic, and for that very reason inexact, best tribute which industrial societies could assumption that current coca plantations, pay to the indigenous South Americans who 99.000 hectares in the 2007 UNODC crop first domesticated the coca bush. survey report39, have probably involved an accumulated clearing of between one and two million hectares over the last thirty years - a 4. COCA AND THE sizable figure for sure, but one which pales to ENVIRONMENT insignificance when compared with the areas dedicated to other tropical crops such as As the original arguments supporting sugar cane, oil palm, soy, maize, bananas, and coca prohibition – its links with addiction and coffee. None of these are ever subject to the malnutrition – have receded or been exposed same official opprobrium as coca; despite the as scientific frauds, so has the international fact that many have uses as fuels and indus- narcotics control bureaucracy been obliged to draw up new justifications for its policies in the 37 See: http://www.sharedresponsibility.gov.co/en/ producing countries. Principal among these has 38 http://cipcol.org/images/0904drugwar02.png been the threat of narcotráfico, though this begs 39 Drug control agencies themselves do not even agree: US State Department figures estimated 167.000 hectares of the question of whether criminalization, rather Colombian coca crops for that same year.

16 Drugs & Conflict N o. 17 - June 2009 C O C A A N D T H E E N VIRO N ME N T trial inputs which have considerably worse Coca agriculture is also best organized in downstream environmental consequences individual family units, rather than in large than coca. The ongoing debate in Brazil over plantations, and this has the effect of dispersing the use of bio-fuels, for example, concerns the plots in small fields which rarely exceed not only the huge areas dedicated to sugar one hectare. This feature has to do with the cane (around 8 million ha. annually40) and seasonality of labour in coca harvesting, and oil palm in that country, but also the energy the requirement of more hands to pick the and environmental costs of processing such leaves at three of four peak moments in the fuels, and their ultimate negative impact – in year. Migrant workers are both expensive and terms of heat and toxic residues – on being undependable for this task, and thus picking is consumed. best accomplished by extended family groups who can engage in other activities in between In terms of deforestation of actual primary the harvest seasons. Many coca-producing rainforest, the impact of coca farming has been areas also have a tradition of political strug- deliberately exaggerated, with the clear objec- gle against large absentee landowners, which tive of gaining political support for eradication by the mid-twentieth century had led to land campaigns. Coca is rarely planted in areas of reforms and a fragmentation of individual virgin woodland, since this demands a great holdings. This has meant that coca as a cash deal of effort to clear, and leaves stumps and crop is usually combined with subsistence fallen tree-trunks which make harvesting of agriculture as well, which ensures that most T coca leaves impractical and highly labour inten- coca is grown in association with other tropi- sive. Deforestation figures, not surprisingly, cal crops, maintaining species diversity in the have never been analysed in terms of exactly local flora and fauna, and helping to delay and N what type of vegetation has been cleared to contain depletion of productive soils. Indeed, plant coca. Verbal reports from farmers in on hillsides which may suffer significant surface I areas as diverse as the department of Cauca erosion, farmers view the perennial coca bush in Colombia, the Huallaga, Apurímac, and – with its wide-spreading, fibrous roots – as a Urubamba valleys in Peru, and the Yungas and soil-stabilizing plant, which helps in the plant- Chapare districts of Bolivia, all describe a pref- ing of other companion crops. Its flowers and erence for clearing regenerating scrublands, fruits, not to mention the leaves, also offer which have been allowed to lie fallow since sustenance to a range of insects, birds and a previous cycle of occupation some two or small mammals, thus enriching the whole cycle three decades previously. It is seldom realized of nutrients in the environment. that the middle altitude areas that favour coca production are among the territories which It is in order to counter such “ecocide” that have the longest history of human occupation the Colombian government – generously in the Andes. Even when new forest clearing funded by US, UN and EU bureaucracies – has for coca cultivation does occur, it can be seen engaged in alternative development projects as a consequence of the irrational policies whose consequences, in both social and envi- of forced eradication. This is particularly the ronmental terms, appear considerably more case in Colombia, where aerial spraying with alarming than the problem they were suppos- herbicides has motivated people to move into edly designed to solve. In the Urubá region of newly cleared, more densely planted areas. In northern Antioquia, for example, the expansion Bolivia and Peru, as well, the decision of peas- of multinational banana plantations has been ants to move their crops into environmental achieved by means of the violent expulsion of protection areas could probably have been independent coca farmers, a pattern repeated prevented if their previous plantations had in many other areas of Colombia. Palm oil, been spared eradication. which is used in many foods and increasingly valued as fuel stock for bio-fuels, is often tout- 40 “Produção de álcool e de açúcar baterá recorde em ed as the key to a more sustainable economy 2008, prevê Conab” (in Portuguese). Folha de São Paulo. for Colombia and a viable alternative to coca 2008-04-29. http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/folha/dinheiro/ ult91u396881.shtml. for many Colombian farmers. The problem

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with palm oil is that it tends to be produced in galling in view of the fact that mining activities areas of extensive monoculture, which provide – which have a far greater measurable impact in a poor source of income and food for the the pollution of water sources – rarely attract resident population, as well as leading to an the same levels of official concern. impoverishment of species diversity in the local flora and fauna. Palm oil also requires industrial The point needs to be made, and repeated, processing, which almost always benefits large that coca eradication campaigns have greatly agro-business concerns, rather than small farm- compounded what could have been a rela- ers. It is, in short, a typical plantation crop; the tively containable phenomenon, forcing coca violence, illegal land seizures, and deforestation farmers to relocate, clear new areas, and that have erupted in Colombia as a by-product engage in increasingly predatory agricultural of the push for more palm-oil production, call practices. Forced eradication is largely on hold into question whether devoting more land to at the moment in Bolivia and southern Peru, growing this crop is really a sustainable eco- due to high levels of political opposition, the nomic or environmental strategy, let alone a election of Evo Morales as Bolivian President, decent alternative to coca. 41 and renewed outbreaks of armed insurgency, particularly in the Ene and Apurímac valleys of Real costs, however, do accrue to the environ- Peru. Throughout this area a degree of horse- ment by the increasing use of industrial prod- trading exists over voluntary coca eradication T ucts in both boosting coca yields and processing targets, most of which are quite understandably coca leaves into coca paste. Chemical fertilizers, not being met. In Peru, regional governments herbicides, and various pest-control substances are being pitched against central government N are widely employed to increase productivity, (Cusco, Huánuco, Puno), and different coca and the impact of these has not been studied growers’ organizations in both Peru and Bolivia I properly, or even less, addressed by the pro- are being pitched against each other (Yungas, grammes that supposedly exist to help coca Chapare, VRAE). Though actual violence has farmers improve their living standards. Again, decreased substantially from the levels of a an ideological definition prevails over serious decade ago, the political costs of continuing scientific inquiry: the “problem” is the produc- to pay lip service to coca eradication targets tion of coca, not the indiscriminate use of the is substantial, and may ultimately discredit the products manufactured by pharmaceutical and current generation of coquero leaders. This can agri-business multinationals. A similar perspec- only lead to an aggravation of conflict, and a tive is dominant in the discussion over the possible return to the policies of forced eradi- pollution caused by the sloppy disposal of the cation that caused such mayhem in the past. chemicals used in coca processing. Somehow the farmers, or those involved in the cocaine Such policies continue to be applied in the extraction process – who have never been Huallaga valley of central Peru, and especially, given a course in how to avoid such pollution throughout Colombia, where they have pro- – must be held accountable for makeshift, clan- duced unimaginable levels of hardship and destine facilities which only exist on account of violence, as well as internal displacement, the severe repression which they would not social “cleansing”, political fragmentation, and attract if they were better organized and more land counter-reform.42 This is not the place permanently sited. The fault is the farmers’ for to detail all the consequences of the imposi- wishing to engage in a precursory industrializa- tion of the US-funded “war on drugs” in these tion of their crop – an aim that is precisely the areas, which have been addressed exhaustively objective of rural development plans around the in several recent publications (Youngers and world, only vigorously denied to coca produc- Rosin 2005, Soberón 2007). Suffice it to say that ers on account of the illicit nature of the final both manual eradication and aerial glyphosate product. This double standard is particularly spraying have the effect of further displacing coca producers and their crops, leading to

41 http://www.foodfirst.org/en/node/2051, and: http://www. tni.org/policybriefings/brief28.pdf 42 Eradications and conflict in Colombia, TNI, May 2008

18 Drugs & Conflict N o. 17 - June 2009 C O C A A N D T H E E N VIRO N ME N T the colonization and clearing of areas, such as Plowman pointed out that the principal eco- the Pacific coast of Colombia, which only very nomic species, Erythroxylum coca, grows best recently have embarked on coca production. in a rather narrow eco-niche, between 800 Forced eradication also has the consequence and 1800 metres altitude, in areas where both of making agricultural practices more preda- rainfall and temperature averages remain high tory; since quicker yields must be ensured and almost constant throughout the year. before the eradicators intervene. This leads to Erythroxylum novogranatense, the indigenous excessive stocking of the coca fields, soil deple- coca of highland Colombia, also spans the tion, and the need to employ ever-increasing same altitude and temperature ranges, but is quantities of industrial fertilizers and pesticides. much more tolerant of environmental stress And finally, glyphosate spraying - the backbone and occasional droughts, which is the reason of Plan Colombia - has involved the added that it has been favoured by experimental environmental cost of destroying all the flora horticulture outside the Andes, and formed the surrounding areas of coca production, as well basis of early twentieth-century Dutch planta- as a series of knock-on effects on human health tions in Java. E. coca has a variety ypadú which and the ecological equilibrium generally, not is adapted to the conditions of lowland Ama- to mention on Colombia’s diplomatic relations zonia, but this yields much less alkaloid and is with its neighbours.43 never likely to be grown extensively, or supply more than a local market. E. novogranatense has How could an alternative be proposed: one a variety truxillense, which is adapted to the dry T that ensures the survival of coca producers, conditions in the mid-altitude Peruvian coastal while at the same time limiting the negative valleys, where it grows under shade and with impact on the environment where it grows? the benefit of irrigation. The area available to N As a first step, the decriminalisation of farm- this variety is relatively limited, and again its ers who grow coca as a means to ensure their consumption is likely to remain restricted to I families´ livelihood would at least open the a traditional outlets – local coca-leaf chewers possibility of dialogue, and allow discussion of and the small market for flavourings, including the existing practical options. Since Timothy that used in Coca-Cola. Plowman’s (1984) groundbreaking work on the botany of coca, few researchers have seen fit to In terms of serious volume, we are left with the highlight the ideal conditions under which the “typical” varieties of E.coca and E. novogranat- different species and varieties of Erythroxylum ense, which can compete with similar alkaloid thrive. One supposes that this could be inter- levels, but have subtly different flavours and preted as being excessively “pro-drug”, or at ecological needs. The soil requirements of coca least, as promoting the dependence of peasant are not particularly narrow, though both spe- farmers on the vagaries of an illicit economy. cies show a preference for a rocky substrate of And yet, in some not too distant future, our schist, shale, volcanic ashes and limestone. The society will have to come to terms with the principal limiting factor is coca’s intolerance need for coca to occupy its rightful place of low temperatures, which is why it never among the many plants which Andean agricul- moved east of the Chapare in Bolivia, where ture has given to the world. At that point, it it is protected by mountains from the cold will be necessary to outline some ideal form winter surazo, which blow up from Patagonia. of coca cultivation which provides its produc- There is, therefore, a relatively limited range ers with a decent income, while nevertheless for coca’s expansion in tropical America, and reducing to a minimum the adverse effects - though parts of Africa and Asia undoubtedly which this has on the wider physical and social share similar characteristics – it is likely that environment, and trying to reduce the amount legal production would remain concentrated diverted to the cocaine industry. in what have already been identified as the most favourable sites. Here a form of stable 43 See for example WOLA (2008) Chemical Reactions: on the and diversified agriculture, incoporating the Failure of Anti-Drug Fumigation in Colombia, on deterioriating best practices of traditional coca-producing bi-lateral relations: and, TNI (2007) The politicization of fumi- gations Glyphosate on the Colombian-Ecuadorian border. areas such as the Yungas of La Paz (Bolivia),

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the La Convención and Huallaga valleys (Perú), coca – can the banner of coca be pressed into and the mountains of Cauca and Santa Marta, service as a unifying symbol for a continent- (Colombia) could offer a future very dif- wide movement of indigenous peoples. ferent from the “ecocide” denounced and perversely promoted by such programmes as Ethnic identity and the use of coca do not Plan Colombia. necessarily coincide, a fact that renders impos- sible any attempt to limit the legitimacy of traditional use to a strictly indigenous con- 5. COCA AND SOCIETY text. In many settings an appreciation of coca has spread over the centuries to the general It is in the social realm that the attitudes population, who have created mestizo or criollo surrounding coca sometimes find their most patterns of consumption that are rarely recog- intransigent expressions, with extreme posi- nized in official discourse as bona fide forms tions underpinned by deeply ingrained cultural of traditional use. In places these practices prejudice. Many of the early condemnations of are criminalized and actively repressed by the the coca habit – from the sixteenth century, state; perhaps the most emblematic example through to the campaigns of the 1950s – had is provided by the south of the department a clearly racist or ethnocentric bias. The words of Cauca, in Colombia, where coca chewing is of the Peruvian psychiatrists who led the still ridiculed in “drug education” programmes, T campaign against cocaismo are typical in this and the small coca farms which provide leaves respect: “…the use of coca, illiteracy, and a nega- for the local market are commonly subjected tive attitude to the superior culture, are all closely to glyphosate spraying and manual eradication. N related…”44 It is not surprising, therefore, that Here it has become routine to accuse coca the recent revival in nationalist and indigenist producers of using the shield of traditional use I sentiment in the Andes has led to a positive to protect the interests of the illicit cocaine re-appraisal of the ancestral use of coca, and industry, an argument that has been deployed the slow diffusion of a better understanding of with increasing frequency by the authorities the plant into new social contexts. In particular, elsewhere in the Andes as well. this change of opinion has been expressed in the slogan printed on a million T-shirts: Coca At the same time, it cannot be denied that no es cocaína. farmers have often used the traditional status of the leaf to defend their coca crops against The objective of this re-evaluation of coca is forced eradication, particularly in Bolivia and clearly to distinguish use of the leaf from that Peru, while being aware of the fact that most of its refined alkaloid, and thus to separate of their harvest probably ends up in the the stereotype of the “drug addict” from the maceration pits for cocaine production. Any image of the traditional coca chewer. Ambigu- formal recognition of coca cultivation for illicit ously recognized and legitimated in Article 14 purposes is considered politically incorrect by of the 1988 Vienna Convention, the question the growers´ unions, even if the argument of of “traditional use” nevertheless continues to growing the crop for livelihood maintenance defy any easy definition. Though by far the larg- is often used in its defence. Both economical est population of coca-leaf consumers remains and cultural arguments are used to defend concentrated among Aymara and Quechua growing coca; the simple truth is that although speakers in the Central Andes, there are other producers would prefer their crop to have an indigenous groups – in highland Colombia, and international legal market, the current demand in the Amazon basin – who have quite separate for coca is still predominantly for the elabora- customs of coca use. There cannot, therefore, tion of cocaine. be any single definition of what constitutes “authentic” traditional practice, and nor – since The banner of traditional use thus attracts there are many native peoples who do not use a degree of scorn from most international authorities and, in order to provide support 44 Gutierrez Noriega and Zapata Ortiz 1947:77 for current policies of crop eradication, it has

20 Drugs & Conflict N o. 17 - June 2009 C O C A A N D S O C I E T Y become necessary for the anti-drug bureauc- absent for centuries, and among social groups racy to define the traditional use of coca in the (students, urban workers, the “alternative” narrowest possible terms. Many argue that it middle class) who, only a generation ago, would is a custom that spread under conditions of have found it unacceptable. In Chile, Paraguay, colonial exploitation, and is now tending to Ecuador, Venezuela and Brazil – even in Europe disappear as the result of the “improvements” and North America46 - small markets for in living conditions due to modernization and coca products are emerging, often in semi- urbanization. The DEVIDA/INEI study carried clandestine forms which defy the neat division out in Peru 45 claimed that a small-scale between illicit drug trafficking and normal survival of coca in purely ritual contexts was legitimate commerce. Rather than disappear- paralleled by a broader decline in its con- ing, the use of coca is currently undergoing a sumption as a functional stimulant, and thus renaissance, much of it outside the bounds concluded that real levels of demand were of what would be considered “traditional” in likely to decrease substantially in coming years. purist terms. This represents a considerable In other words, this study saw coca as incom- threat to the declared objectives of the UN patible with a modern life-style, and reserved Conventions, and thus inevitably attracts offi- for the future a defi- cial condemnation. In nition of traditional its report for 2007, use which verged on the INCB roundly the purely folkloric. denounced Bolivia’s T The clear objec- Rather than disappearing, attempt to protect tives of DEVIDA, the use of coca is currently its market for tradi- the funding agency, tional coca products N were to support the undergoing a renaissance, and requested them 1961 Convention’s much of it outside the bounds to prosecute its use: I call for a “phasing out” of the coca of what would be considered “Coca leaf is used habit in Peru, and to “traditional” in purist terms in Bolivia and Peru deny any legitimacy for the manufacture to coca growers and and distribution of traders in the tradi- mate de coca (coca tional market. tea). Such use is also not in line with the provisions of the 1961 Con- There is a good political reason for current vention. The Board again calls on the Govern- attempts to belittle the importance of any sur- ments of Bolivia and Peru to consider amending vival in legitimate uses of the coca leaf, and to their national legislation so as to abolish or deny that any expansion in demand is presently prohibit activities that are contrary to the 1961 under way. In Colombia, the total prohibition Convention, such as coca leaf chewing and the of coca in any form (a policy pursued blindly, manufacture of mate de coca (coca tea) and and with obvious counter-productive effects, other products containing coca alkaloids for since 1947) is being undermined by the growth domestic use and export” .47 in a market for teas, flours and other semi- industrialized products. In Peru and Bolivia, Perhaps the most interesting example of the the coca leaf is rapidly re-acquiring the status change in cultural attitudes concerns pre- of a potent national symbol, in response to its cisely Bolivia’s largest destination for coca-leaf previous misappropriation and misrepresenta- exports, Argentina. Introduced originally in tion purely as a source of cocaine. No longer an ethnic preserve, coca is being consumed 46 See for example article on booming coca liquor in in geographical areas (the Peruvian coast, the New York, El Diario, 28 March, 2009: http://www.impre. Bolivian lowlands) where it had been virtually com/noticias/2009/3/28/furor-por-licor-de-hoja-de- coc-116526-2.html# 47 Annual report INCB 2007, United Nations, New York, 45 Rospigliosi 2004 2008, E/INCB/2007/1

Drugs & Conflict N o. 17 - June 2009 21 C O C A M Y T H S

pre-Hispanic times, and further popularised by added). It even admitted that this was an area repeated waves of immigration from the Andes “where clarifications are needed” with the Board ever since, at some point in the early twenti- “confident that the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, eth century coca crossed the ethnic and class on the basis of scientific evaluation, will resolve divide and became a custom acceptable to the such long-standing ambiguities, which have been regional elite in the northern provinces of Salta undermining the conventions.” Here the absurdi- and Jujuy. Prohibited by the military regime of ties of coca prohibition could not be more the 1970s, its subsequent re-legalization was clearly exposed: an herbal tea acceptable to the supported by a vote in the national congress great and the good remains, in a strictly legal - a decision very difficult to overturn, as any interpretation of the 1961 Single Convention, return to the policies of the dictatorship would a powerfully addictive drug with no known today be almost impossible to sustain. Thus, therapeutic or industrial uses. from being originally an element of an alien Andean identity, in Argentina coca has become a mark of regional pride, now entirely removed FINAL REMARKS from its original indigenous roots. This evolu- tion demonstrates, if further evidence were International legislation on the coca leaf needed, how ineffectual the UN conventions appears locked into a series of misunderstand- have been in eliminating the consumption of ings, which have deep historical roots, including T coca leaf in South America, and how unrealistic racial and cultural intolerance, the arrogance it is for the INCB to continue insisting that of the psychiatric profession, and a one-sided only “medical and scientific” uses for coca definition of the world’s “drug problem” by N should be allowed by member states. It also developed countries. It is hardly surprising if underscores the need to define “traditional a long-delayed reaction to the current legal I use” not in ethnic or even geographical terms, formula sometimes stakes out a position in but rather as any use of the coca leaf in forms excessively emphatic or simplistic forms (coca not subject to chemical manipulation. sí, cocaína no). At no point in the establish- ment of the current regime were the views A particularly good illustration of this - as the of traditional coca users taken into account, INCB tacitly acknowledged in the 2007 report despite the fact that they numbered millions - is the use of coca leaf as a tea, something of otherwise law-abiding, healthy and produc- that has long been acceptable in the Andes as tive citizens. Their social practices and ethical a cure for soroche, or altitude sickness. Pope values were of no account in the corridors of Paul VI, the Queen of Spain, Princess Anne of power, where cultural “cleansing” was dressed the United Kingdom: these and many other up in the language of redemption, of liberation authorities, including even sundry functionar- from a dangerous form of drug dependence. ies of the United Nations and the US State Thus did the twentieth century Western Department, have enthusiastically sipped on powers re-edit their unfinished business of the coca tea offered on arrival at the 4000- conquering America – not just its peoples and meter altitude of La Paz airport. The INCB, in resources, but even its customs and consump- its 1994 supplement48, admitted that one of tion patterns. As an increasingly vociferous the ambiguities surrounding the coca issue was defence of the coca leaf gathers pace, a degree the drinking of coca tea “which is considered of humble recognition of past mistakes may yet harmless and legal in several countries in South mark a return to humane tolerance, the true America, (but) is an illegal activity under the provi- spirit of scientific endeavour, and a welcome sions of both the 1961 Convention and the 1988 reconciliation between peoples marked by a Convention, though that was not the inten- history of conflict. tion of the plenipotentiary conferences that adopted those conventions” (emphasis

48 http://www.incb.org/pdf/e/ar/incb_report_1994_ 1.pdf, p.4

22 Drugs & Conflict N o. 17 - June 2009 B ibliography

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Perú en época de democracia.” In Ricardo Soberón ed. • De Kort, Marcel - 1999 “Doctors, diplomats and Hablan los diablos. Lima: Transnational Institute. businessmen: conflicting interests in the Netherlands and • Szasz, Thomas - 1974 Ceremonial chemistry: The Dutch East Indies, 1860-1950.” In Paul Gootenberg (ed.) ritual persecution of drugs, addicts and pushers. London: Cocaine: Global Histories. London: Routledge. Routeledge and Kegan Paul. • Díaz, Aurelio - 1998 Hoja, pasta, polvo y roca. • Unanue, Hipolito - 1794 “Disertación sobre el aspecto, El consumo de los derivados de la coca. Barcelona: cultivo, comercio y virtudes de la famosa planta del Perú Universitat Autónoma. llamada coca.” Mercurio Peruano 11: 205-250. • Duke JA, Aulik D, Plowman T - 1975 Nutritional value • Valdizán, Hermilio - 1913 “El cocainismo y la raza of coca. 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Drugs & Conflict N o. 17 - June 2009 23 History has been unjust to the coca leaf, Founded in 1974, TNI is an international network denying it distribution on a global scale despite of activists and research- its proven value as an energy enhancer, while ers committed to critically limiting its potential for widespread use as a analysing current and fu- healthy alternative to all sorts of chemical ture global problems. Its goal is to provide intellec- stimulants currently available on the world tual support to grassroots market. movements concerned about creating a more democratic, equitable and The inclusion of the coca leaf in the 1961 sustainable world. Single Convention’s lists of drugs liable to abuse, and therefore subject to international Since 1996, TNI’s Drugs control, has not produced the effect originally and Democracy Pro - gramme has been analys- desired: traditional use - whether by chewing ing trends in the illegal the leaves or drinking them in an infusion - drug economy and global is still widespread, though largely limited to drug policy, causes and T effects on the economy, a few countries where such practices have peace and democracy. historical antecedents. Potential demand is N high, particularly for coca tea. The ban of The programme does field even this innocuous custom is still one of the research, fosters political I debate, provides infor- demands repeated annually in the statements mation to officials and of the INCB, the interpretive body of the UN journalists, coordinates control system. This unreasonable posture international campaigns and conferences, produc- has recently led to a formal request from one es analytical articles and government to abrogate the articles of the documents, and maintains 1961 Convention that demand abolishing of an electronic information coca leaf chewing. service on the topic. The goal of the programme The present issue of Drugs & Conflict intends and the Drugs and Conflict to debunk and disentangle the most prominent series is to encourage a re- evaluation of current poli- myths surrounding the coca leaf. It aims to clear cies and advocate policies the air and help steer the debate towards a based on the principles of more evidence-based judgement of the issues. harm reduction, fair trade, Discussion has been stuck for too long at the development, democracy, human rights, protection point where it is now, and - sometime in the of health and the environ- near future - political decisions will need to ment, and conflict preven- be made on coca’s fate and legal status. tion.

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