Let Me Chew My Coca Leaves

[JohnyCanuck]

By EVO MORALES AYMA
Published: March 13, 2009

THIS week in Vienna, a meeting of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs took place that will help shape international antidrug efforts for the next 10 years. I attended the meeting to reaffirm Bolivia’s commitment to this struggle but also to call for the reversal of a mistake made 48 years ago.

In 1961, the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs placed the coca leaf in the same category with cocaine — thus promoting the false notion that the coca leaf is a narcotic — and ordered that “coca leaf chewing must be abolished within 25 years from the coming into force of this convention.” Bolivia signed the convention in 1976, during the brutal dictatorship of Col. Hugo Banzer, and the 25-year deadline expired in 2001.

So for the past eight years, the millions of us who maintain the traditional practice of chewing coca have been, according to the convention, criminals who violate international law. This is an unacceptable and absurd state of affairs for Bolivians and other Andean peoples.

SNIP

The custom of chewing coca leaves has existed in the Andean region of South America since at least 3000 B.C. It helps mitigate the sensation of hunger, offers energy during long days of labor and helps counter altitude sickness. Unlike nicotine or caffeine, it causes no harm to human health nor addiction or altered state, and it is effective in the struggle against obesity, a major problem in many modern societies.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/14/opinion/14morales.html?_r=1&WRH

[MADem]

1. He lost me when he tried to claim that his leaf was "better" than caffeine or nicotine.

It's the same shit. Habit-forming, if not addictive. Used by some as a weight loss tool. And they're all about quantity. A little, not so bad; a lot, bad.

[EmilyAnne]

2. I chewed them in Peru when I hiked up Machu Picchu. They helped with the altitude adjustment.

In fact, Picchu in Quechua means the wad of coca held in a chewer's cheek.
Machu Pichu literally means big or old coca wad. At the foot of Machu Picchu is Huanya Picchu which is a smaller mountain. It means little or young coca wad.

I have never seen, read or heard claims that it is addictive. This flies in the face of the reality of how coca leaves are used.
A lethal dosage is impossible.
Its not the same thing as cocaine, not even close.

[MADem]

7. The context of the writer's remarks ascribed "superiority" to the product that it does not merit.

A small amount of coffee or nicotine isn't "addictive" either. And they are "cultural tools" as well, as I've pointed out elsewhere.

My point--there's nothing "special" or sacrosanct about these leaves, any more than there's anything special about a tobacco leaf, or a coffee bean. How much nicotine is there in a single tobacco leaf? How much caffeine in a single coffee bean?

They're no "better" than nicotine or caffeine, which are also used as diet aids. It's all in how they're used. Hell, some studies say coffee can prevent heart disease. Nicotine treats postural hypotension. You can find something good to say about any or all of them.

This guy trying to suggest the "superiority" of his preferred jolt as part of his argument lost me.

It's all in how it's used.

[a la izquierda]

4. As another posted said very politely...

your facts are wrong.

Coca is a cultural tool that has been used by Andean indigenous groups for thousands of years. Your flippant comments are pretty ignorant. It isn´t the ¨same shit¨as nicotine or caffeine. But by golly, gotta have some substance that draws our damning attention. Ugh.

[MADem]

6. Nicotine is a cultural tool of the American Indian

Coffee is a cultural tool of everyone from Juan Valdez to Harry Commuter, and turkish coffee has been made in a classic manner over a wood or charcoal fire for CENTURIES.

Talk about ethno-centric!

My facts aren't wrong--you'd best take off those blinders.

[EmilyAnne]

3. Banning coca leaves in the Andes would be such bullshit. Ridiculous.

[JohnyCanuck]

5. They are having such a success

in the fight to prevent people producing and consuming cocaine, they must figure it will be a piece of cake to get them to stop chewing coca leaves. :sarcasm:

Or maybe they're just looking at the dollars that will be funneled into the "war on coca leaves" as an added bonus to the millions already being funneled into the war on drugs.

Video - Who's winning the war on drugs.