COCA no es una droga?

The United States' preoccupation with plant life is one of the red button issues throughout South America.

Specifically, Coca eradication campaigns have been carried out by the US government on foreign soil like Bolivia and Colombia, inciting or encouraging everything from angry protest to armed revolt. The frustrating part of the US policy is that the drug problem continues unabated at home, while foreign opposition to US policy continues to grow. Why do all these countries hate us so much?

The leaves of the coca plant are the base ingredient for cocaine. You need hundreds of pounds of coca leafs to make any measurable amount of cocaine, but there is no known way to make the drug without them. The leaves themselves are not narcotics per se, though they do wonders with the control of hunger, sleep, dust inhallation, altitude sickness and headaches. It has been heralded that miners can works in extreme conditions for 24 hours straight with no food thanks to chewing coca leaves all day - and I'm inclined to believe it is actually true.

Since coca leaves are used to make drugs, the US wants them banned worldwide. The problem is that the Andean South America countries use them in all sorts of rituals and religions (like the quechua religion that involves the llama fetus pictured above), and have cultivated them for thousands of years. They are also used to make tea, some of which is packaged and sold commerically. These uses are not a huge concern to the US, but there also happens to be one more product that uses coca leaves, which makes full eradication utterly impossible: Coca Cola.

YUP! Bolivia actually supplies Coca Cola with lots of those little illegal suckers weekly. They are used in making the syrup that, when mixed with carbonated water, makes Coke taste so good. How did Coke get the rights to import and use an illegal pharmaceutical product? Your guess is as good as mine.

So, why does everyone hate us? We send jet fighters into their countries to spill toxic chemicals on their farmland eradicating most coca leaves, while allowing one of our largest corporations protection to buy the remaining stock. Pretty nuts.

Here is a sweet picture of me with the freebasing cokehead dummy at the Museum of Coca in La Paz, Bolivia. He looks pretty strung out, but I (with the exception of my mullet) look OK. I particularly like how he is rocking a suitjacket.

Here are some links on exactly what you just read, though many more are out there on the internets:

http://www.american.edu/TED/coca.htm
coca trade and environment, some US laws against coca growing from the 90´s

http://www.american.edu/TED/bolcoca.htm
all about bolivian coca growing. note about coca cola´s purchase of coca leaves still. Us pushes Bolivia to put coca eradication into law in 1988.

http://www.therisenrealm.com/cocacola_recipe.html
coca cola recipe. Note - "F.E. Coco" means fluid extract of coca (the plant that produces cocaine), however the recipe does not go into details as to how this extract was prepared. Another Coca-Cola formula in the possession of Frank Robinson's great-grandson, indicates that 10 pounds of coca leaf are required to flavor 36 gallons of syrup. It is also believed that the coca plant with lower cocaine levels was used to produce the extract. This is based on some writings that indicate some coca plants were too bitter.

Comments

[austin]

I'm pretty sure Coca Cola still uses those leaves in their product. Ever notice in England how every can of coke has a warning saying, "Contains vegetable extracts"? I always wondered what vegetables had been hidden in there...

Still, let's see if we can prove this via the internets. Anyone have a better set of sites than the ones I listed?

[Leeez]

Again, to clarify.

Coca Cola DOES continue to import approximately six tons of coca leaves annually to support its trademark flavorful kick. Still.

[Senor Flex]

Wait, doesn't this prove my point?

I'm not saying they got rid of the coca leaves from the original formula because of its harm. No kidding it was hysteria - I figured that part was obvious. But regardless of the reason, it means coca-cola isn't currently interested in coca leaves. Thus making AK's point - yet again - bullshit.

And scholarly sources? Ha! This is maybe the 3rd time I read this site. Who cares anyway.

[Leeeez]

Just to clarify for Senor Flex.

Coca Cola removed the combination of kola nuts (which have effects similar to those of coca) with coca leaf extract NOT because the leaves themselves were addictive. Rather, this occurred in the early 1900s, when it was becoming publicly knows that cocaine was addictive and generally harmful. In short, the removal of coca from the original formula was the result of a growing (and valid) social aversion to cocaine "the drug" confused with it's natural, unprocessed ingredient, the leaf. If you have any more doubts, consider that the original drink contained a teeny tiny fraction of the chemical in the leaf used in contemporary cocaine processing - not enough to have any real effect on a bug, much less a human.

I believe this supports the whole POINT of this post, namely that equating the coca leaf with America's big old cocaine problem is ignorant at best.

Next time, I would hesitate to cite the Food Network in any argument when scholarly sources are so plentiful...

[Flex]

So yesterday I was watching the food network and watched the history of coca-cola. Seems in the early 1900s, when it was discovered that coca leaves were addictive and harmful, the owners of coca-cola changed their recipe from coca to sugar - and its been that way ever since.

Hmm kinda makes your whole point complete bullshit.

Looking forward to reading more anti-US propaganda once you collect some more US-earned dollars and go back on the road.