According to today’s legal, scientific, and ethical standards the views that led up to coca being classified as a drug are no longer valid.
Mattha Busby Filter
As part of an international campaign to eliminate coca in Peruvian Andes, calls began more than a century before. mission civilisatrice led by eugenicist Enrique Paz Soldán, long before concern over cocaine and the subsequent United States-abetted drug war. He once stated that if we wait for a miracle from God to save our Indigenous peoples from coca’s deteriorating effects, then we are no longer men who care about civilization.
Indigenous people have been chewing coca leaves for over 8,000 year. But 20th-century elites in Lima—like the Spanish conquistadors when they first arrived on the continent—identified coca chewing as culturally and spiritually integral to a way of life different from their own.
A 1947 report from the Peruvian ministry of education stated that “the consumption of cocaine, illiteracy, as well as a negative view towards the superior cultures are all interrelated.”
In response, the United Nations dispatched a team to “investigate the cocaine-chewing issue” in two years. The UN then called for the “suppression’ of coca production to end a “social sin.”
The UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs implemented a global ban on coca chewing in 1964. Researchers still find it difficult to obtain the leaves, even though they have been understudied.
Later, similar paternalistic arguments would be used to try and justify the global drug war. But 75 years on from the UN’s first diktats on coca, the organization’s health authority is set to publish its “critical” health review of the evidence underpinning the Schedule I status of the mildly stimulating, medicinal plant—rich in calcium and iron—after requests from Bolivia and Colombia to end its international prohibition.
Indigenous advocates have been prominent in building momentum for those countries—coca is already legal in Bolivia; in Colombia, consumption is only permitted within Indigenous communities—to make that request. David Curtidor told The Times of London that this is “a David-and-Goliath fight against colonialism”. “We say enough is sufficient.”
Colombian botanist Óscar Pérez, of Kew Gardens, sees coca as the world’s most misunderstood plant. It is unfair that coca has been demonized, he said. América Futura In November. All coca plants are illegal in Europe and the Schengen region, even though it’s not clear if they are being used to make cocaine. Actually, I didn’t know where to start my research. It’s ridiculous.”
A change is possible. The World Health Organization (WHO) review could potentially lead the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs to recommend a reduction in the classification of coca, from which both cocaine and Coca-Cola derive key ingredients, under drug control treaties—or even decriminalization.
Diego Pary said, “This is the Coca Leaf,” in New York in November, while holding one of the leaves in his hand, as former President Evo Morales had done in 2013 in the UN conference room. Pary, unlike Morales in 2013, put the coca leaf directly into his mouth.
The man demonstrated how to remove the stem and then chew the leaf.
Pary continued, “We have to demystify and dispel all the myths about the coca plant that we’ve heard over the years.” The Indigenous peoples recognise that the coca leaves are not only a plant, but also a spiritual tool which allows them to live in harmony with their ancestors and nature.
World Health Organization is likely to choose one of three options: recommend that coca leaves be transferred from Schedule I to Schedule II, or remove coca entirely.
Martin Jelsma is a director of the Transnational Institute (a progressive think-tank) and told Filter that the views held in the past, which led to the current classification, are no longer valid. If the WHO does not call for change, it risks losing its credibility in fulfilling the treaty mandate and respecting Indigenous rights.
He said that governments defending the current status quo fear that changing its classification could set a precedent, leading to the reclassification of other drugs and the eventual end of global prohibition. The coca leaf review is a major issue and will dominate the UN corridors throughout this year.
In 1949, when the UN sent its investigation team, the leader of the mission immediately announced the findings at a press conference held in an airport. Howard Fonda, vice-president of the American Pharmaceutical Association at the time, said that chewing coca was “definitely deleterious and harmful” as well as “the cause of degeneration in many populations groups”.
“Our studies will confirm the truth of our statements, and we hope to be able to submit a rational plan of action…to secure the total eradication of this pernicious habit,” he said.
In 1950, the UN Commission on the Enquiry of the Coca Leaf Report recommended the “suppression of coca”. Pablo Osvaldo Wolff is a psychiatrist and criminologist who was involved in the commission’s report. Wolff later served as head of WHO Expert Committee on Addiction-Producing Drugs. He described people who chew cocaine as “abulic” and “apathetic”, lazy or insensitive. [and] befogged.”
An article published by the WHO in 1952 stated that “we are convinced coca-leaf chomping is an evil social practice; chronic consumption of this leaves is social poison, which lowers moral and financial standards and undermines physical and mental well being of the populace.”
The coca crop was controlled, but on a small scale. But the foundations for the destructive U.S. coca eradication campaigns that began in the 1980s were already laid.
In the span of several decades, over 260,000 deaths occurred and 7,000,000 people had to leave their homes. In the U.S. drug war the U.S. spent a billion dollars, but most of that money went to Colombian, Peruvian, and Bolivian leaders at the expense others.
Wade Davis said to Filter: “Most Colombians never saw cocaine or used it. They suffered in a true war on drugs.” Davis, who wrote the bestselling 1996 novel One River about coca’s history, was made honorary Colombian in 2018. I think the drug is not what drives the market. It’s the money.
Davis who was involved in a nutritional study on coca leaves at Harvard Botanical Museum, conducted in 1975, said that Coca is of great spiritual significance to Andean culture, but it’s also a staple of their diet. Andean cuisine has traditionally been devoid of calcium-rich milk sources.
The U.S. government was horrified by what he said at a recent UN conference. It turns out that coca contains a lot of vitamins [and] “It has more Calcium than any other plant studied by the science. This made it perfect in a diet which traditionally lacks a dairy product.”
The 1975 study concluded that coca had higher levels of protein, fats, fiber, ash and calcium. It also contained more phosphorus, iron as well as vitamin A, riboflavin and vitamin C.
WHO will consider all of these factors, but it’s unlikely that they will assess coca’s potential to reduce harm. Coca has been found to be an effective alternative for people addicted to crack or powder cocaine.
In Tarapoto in Peru, the Taki Wasi center treats people suffering from substance abuse problems with coca leaves. This is part of a larger rehabilitation plan that also includes Amazonian psychoactive plant species. “Coca is a stimulant, it stimulates the production of dreams, and it’s calming for physical pain. It allows for healing of wounds. [you] Focus and alignment on all levels”.
It is unlikely that the WHO review would lead to changes in laws regarding the consumption of cocaine. However, there have been increasing calls for the creation of a legalized, regulated drug market due to global demands which fuel violence in order control the trade. Any policy liberalization will bring economic gains to Andean Communities.
Steve Rolles is a senior analyst with the Transform Drug Policy Foundation in the United Kingdom. He told Filter, “There are precedents within treaties that have the plant-based versions of drugs not schedule, while the extracted drugs do.”
Rolles campaigned for a legalized, regulated cocaine industry that included milder, gum-like, lozenge, and snus like forms. He said that if WHO’s evaluation of coca risks was “meaningful” and “honest”, “coca will be completely removed from schedules.”
Rolles imagines that the US would be able to rally enough support, even if WHO did recommend rescheduling. Any change to the scheduling of coca leaves would be viewed as a challenge to drug war norms in relation cocaine and crack.
Decocainized drinks are now available, with one even sponsoring U.S. National Lacrosse League. Power Leaves Corp. is the first non-Coca-Cola company to manufacture and sell coca extracts on a global scale.
Reform momentum is increasing, despite the WHO’s review. Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, spoke at a high-level side event on coca in March 2024, which was also organized by Bolivia and Colombia—with support from Canada, Czechia, Malta, Mexico and Switzerland.
“Indigenous Peoples have been overpoliced on practices such as subsistence cultivation of drug crops—crops which may be used as traditional medicines, which are essential to their lives and livelihoods, and which hold deep cultural and spiritual significance,” Türk said.
The Wisdom of the Leaf is a multidisciplinary conference on coca that will take place in February at the McKenna Academy. The event, organized by Davis and the non-profit McKenna Academy together, takes place just outside Cusco. David Choquehuanca, Vice President of Bolivia will be speaking at the event to support legalization.
Choquehuanca, a representative of Choquehuanca’s ancestral Andean and Amazonian peoples at the UN said in April that “the natural coca leaves are like a seal protecting the identity” of these ancient Andean-Amazonians. “The coca leaf’s true nature is slowly coming out of the collective unconscious.”
This article was originally published by Filter, an online magazine covering drug use, drug policy and human rights through a harm reduction lens. Follow Filter on Facebook or Twitter, or sign up for its newsletter.
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