Is It Legal to Grow Coca Leaves
The historical justification for the international ban on coca leaves in the Single Convention of 1961 comes from the “Commission of Inquiry into the Coca Leaf Study” published in 1950. It was requested by the Permanent Representative of Peru to the United Nations and prepared by a commission that briefly visited Bolivia and Peru in 1949 to “study the effects of chewing the coca leaf and the possibilities of limiting its production and controlling its distribution”. She concluded that the effects of chewing coca leaves were negative, even though chewing coca was defined as a habit rather than an addiction. [68] [69] It is still unknown what happens to cocaine ingested during chewing in the body, although its presence in the blood has been observed. Cocaine is thought to be largely hydrolyzed in the liver and converted into ecgonine, an alkaloid that also has toxic effects. In any case, the excretion of part of the cocaine in the urine is also observed forty-eight hours after chewing, an interval in which 24.7-98.4% of the total ingested alkaloids are eliminated. [5] The elimination of cocaine alone is not that important, fluctuating between 6.7 and 20.8 of the amount ingested, probably because it has been partially converted to ecgonine and eliminated in this form. P. Salomón B Potenciación del efecto neuroestimulante de la cocaína por substancias alcahnas, Revista de Farmacología y Medicina Experimental, T 2, p.
114, 1949. A very interesting and revealing phenomenon is revealed by a study of intelligence coefficients and the duration of coca addiction. There is a strong link between these factors, with the duration of dependence being directly proportional to mental age and vice versa, clearly demonstrating the important role that coca plays in the process of mental deterioration of coca-addicts. Mental deficits begin as soon as coca addiction begins and increase as addiction progresses. According to the schoolmasters of the Sierra, the mental development of children addicted to coca shows a delay that can be almost compensated when the habit of chewing is overcome. This means that the process of adaptation has reached such an extreme of perfection that it transforms man into a new race. In these circumstances, it is clearly illogical to need the help of an alkaloid to achieve acclimatization. So, is it a breed that has adapted to the climate, or a pharmacological process that leads to climate adaptation? If the resident is so well acclimatized that he or she has been racially altered by acclimatization, medication to facilitate adaptation should not be required. The inconsistency is even greater if we remember that the Spanish white race and other breeds that have adapted to the Andean climate in recent years do not use coca for acclimatization purposes. Therefore, it seems absurd to me to claim that the “climatophysiological race”, whose colonization of the Andes dates back thousands of years, needs coca alkaloids to live at high altitudes, while much younger and theoretically less well-adapted races do not need the drug.
“The main organization authorized to buy coca leaves is ENACO S.A. based in Peru. [84] Outside of South America, the laws of most countries do not distinguish between the coca leaf and other cocaine-containing substances, so possession of coca leaves is prohibited. In South America, the coca leaf is illegal in Paraguay and Brazil. While the rest of the world sees cocaine when it hears about coca plants, parts of South America (Ecuador, Colombia, Argentina, Bolivia and Peru) have a completely different view. For them, the plant serves more than the raw material for one of the most frowned upon hard drugs – and has been for thousands of years. Article 26 of the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs requires countries that permit the cultivation of coca to designate an authority to regulate coca cultivation and to physically possess the crops as soon as possible after harvest and to destroy all coca grown wild or illegally grown. Efforts to enforce these regulations, known as coca eradication, have included many strategies, ranging from aerial spraying of herbicides on coca crops to support and incentives to encourage farmers to grow alternative crops. [81] It is undeniable that other factors can have a negative impact on mental development, such as education, language, geographical and social isolation, economic difficulties, heredity, alcoholism, nutritional deficiencies, etc. In a previous publication, we examined in detail the role that each of these factors plays in cocaine mental retardation, and we believe that these factors are of secondary importance. [15] The link between the duration of addiction and mental decline shows that coca is the main cause of the deficiencies that have occurred.
It is probably true to say that coca, in turn, is responsible for some of the above factors and thus acts directly and indirectly on intelligence. Although coca leaf chewing is common only among indigenous peoples,[47] the consumption of coca tea (mate de coca) is common in all sectors of society in Andean countries, especially due to its high altitude above sea level,[47] and is widely considered beneficial to health, mood and energy. [47] Coca leaves are sold packaged in tea bags in most grocery stores in the area, and tourist establishments typically offer coca tea.
