Bolivia?s coca: From cottage industry to mass export? February 14, 2006 - localnewsleader.com
LA PAZ, Bolivia, Feb 14 Reuters - It is not often that the menu of a presidential inaugural dinner provides insight into a country?s development plans. But it did at the inauguration of Bolivia?s Evo Morales last month -- the fare included coca cake, coca cookies, coca wine and coca sweets.
Served to some 300 local and foreign dignitaries in the airy grand hall of the presidential palace, the coca-based menu served notice that the new Bolivian government will try to win international legitimacy for the coca leaf and make it an export commodity.
That could well stir controversy because, aside from being used as a flavoring and in traditional remedies, leaves from the coca plant are also the raw material for cocaine. The U.S. government has for years funded efforts to eradicate coca crops in Latin American countries.
While the leftists elected to power in Bolivia have been sharply critical of U.S. capitalism, they share some of the U.S. business community?s views on the relative rank of export markets.
"We need, and we can, develop markets for our coca," said congresswoman Leonilda Zurita, a coca grower and close associate of Morales. "China is particularly important. The Chinese like herbs and they?ll like our coca tea."
Closer to home, Morales -- the first former coca grower to run a country and Bolivia?s first indigenous president -- wants to work out an export agreement with Argentina, where chewing the coca leaf is legal but its importation is not.
Coca leaf was declared an illegal narcotic in the 1961 U.N. Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, along with cocaine, heroin, opium and morphine and a host of chemical drugs. The convention came into force in 1964.
Most medical opinion holds that coca leaf, as opposed to the cocaine extracted from it, is neither addictive nor harmful. The leaf?s use as a mild stimulant and hunger suppressant dates back thousands of years.
Taking coca leaf off the U.N. list was one of the main planks of Morales?s election campaign. His moves as president are being followed closely, not only by his core constituency in Bolivia but also in Colombia and Peru, where there are fledgling coca-based legal industries.
In Colombia, a group of Nasa Indians have started marketing a rival for Coca Cola called Coca Sek. A Peruvian company makes a coca-based energy drink called Vortex, and there is a line of packaged coca cookies. Coca-based products in Bolivia include shampoo, face cream, coca tea bags and pills to cure altitude sickness. When used as a flavoring, coca gives foods an herbal tang.
The scale of coca production is tiny, no more than cottage industries for local markets. But growers and officials say their assertions that the leaf is beneficial and nutritious deserve more respect than they have received in the past.
Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca said recently that coca should be part of the breakfast in Bolivian schools because it contained more calcium than milk, a remark which made worldwide headlines but drew more chuckles than nods.
But three Harvard researchers -- James Duke, David Aulik and Timothy Plowman -- came to similar conclusions in an extensive 1975 study which said 100 grams of coca leaf matched or exceeded the U.S. recommended daily dose of calcium, iron, phosphorous, vitamin A and riboflavin.
"The debate over coca has not been very rational," said a diplomat from the European Community, which has agreed to contribute 420,000 euros ($500,000) to a study to establish the size of the legal market for coca in Bolivia.
Complaints about the lack of rational argument on coca leaf are echoed up and down the Chapare, the tropical region where Morales launched his political career by leading coca growers in protests against U.S.-financed efforts to eradicate the coca plant.
"We need to make the world understand that coca and cocaine are different things," said Anacleto Rodriguez, a leader of the coca growers? union in Morales? home village of Villa 14 de Septiembre. "We need to open minds. Alcohol and tobacco, very harmful substances, are traded freely. Why not coca?"
In all three coca-growing countries, the Coca-Cola Co regularly features in conversations about coca and is usually cited as evidence for Western hypocrisy.
U.N. CONVENTION MADE EXCEPTION FOR COCA COLA
The 1961 U.N. convention contains a clause -- article 27 -- Latin Americans believe was specifically introduced for the benefit of the Coca-Cola Co.
It says: "The parties may permit the use of coca leaves for the preparation of a flavoring agent, which shall not contain any alkaloids, and to the extent necessary for such use, may permit the production, import, export, trade in and possession of such leaves."
Coca-Cola, maker of the world?s best-selling soft drink, routinely declines comment on coca, saying the drink?s ingredients are secret. But Coca-Cola spokespeople have said the company does not buy coca leaves, which is technically correct.
The only legal importer of coca leaf into the United States is the Stepan Co. of Maywood, New Jersey, a company so media-shy it has no public relations department or spokesperson. Telephone inquiries yield pregnant pauses and the suggestion that databases and public records can provide the details Stepan declines to divulge.
According to public records and published reports, Stepan imports coca leaves -- around 380,000 pounds (172,000 kg) a year -- under an agreement with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) which has to be renewed every year. The latest application to import coca leaves was filed on March 29, 2005, and needs to be renewed next month.
Stepan is the only company in the U.S. registered to import coca and produce cocaine.
Stepan turns part of the leaves into cocaine, largely for use as a local anesthetic in dentistry and ear, nose and throat surgery. The other part is turned into a flavoring extract for Coca-Cola, in a process which removes the active ingredient for cocaine.
CHANGE OF CONVENTION UNLIKELY
The next opportunity to amend the 1961 convention would be a meeting of the U.N. Economic and Social Council in Vienna in 2008. Diplomats view as extremely remote the possibility of a global consensus on changing the blacklist of substances.
U.S. officials also tend to scoff at suggestions that there is a sizable potential market for coca-based products, notwithstanding a billion-dollar global industry for dietary supplements. There are some coca-based formulations meant to help dieters, but none are distributed widely yet.
Despite such skepticism, Morales has vowed to fight for what he calls the "de-criminalization" of coca. His former comrades in the coca growers? federation talk of a rosy commercial future for legal coca products.
One possibility they mention would be an internationally marketed natural version of the potency-enhacing drug Viagra and similar medications.
At the coca museum in La Paz, the world?s only, a poster of a statuette from the Capuli culture, which flourished in Colombia and Ecuador from 850 to 1500 A.D., explains why there are such hopes.
The statuette is of a sitting man, his right cheek bulging with what appears to be a wad of coca leaves. His penis is of such monumental size that it rises above his head. "Learn to chew coca!!" reads the poster?s legend.
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