Pubdate: Mon, 23 Mar 2009
Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC)
Copyright: 2009 The Vancouver Sun
Contact: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/letters.html
Website: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/477
Author: Jonathan Manthorpe

THINGS GO BETTER WITH COCA?

Imagine for a moment Premier Gordon Campbell writing an Op Ed column 
in The New York Times complaining about international condemnation of 
B.C. Bud and extolling the continuing "ritual, religious and cultural 
significance" of this condiment for British Columbians.

That's more or less what happened last week when Bolivian President 
Evo Morales wrote in the New York-based newspaper defending the right 
of his people -- and, indeed, all Andean peoples -- to keep up their 
5,000-year-long tradition of chewing the coca leaf.

Morales was complaining about the 1961 United Nations Single 
Convention on Narcotic Drugs, which places the coca leaf in the same 
category as its enriched derivative cocaine -- and alongside cannabis 
- -- under which Bolivia was required to eradicate coca chewing by 
2001. Morales said chewing coca is no more harmful or addictive than 
a cup of coffee and far less so than smoking another alkaloid drug, tobacco.

Meanwhile neigbouring Peru is battling its own problems with the coca 
leaf and has come up with an imaginative solution. Since Shining Path 
guerrillas failed to take power in their 20-year war in which 70,000 
people died, they have turned to cocaine production and trafficking. 
Like Morales, the Peruvian coca farmers contend the leaf is not 
narcotic unless made into cocaine. To prove it they are starting to 
market for export to China and elsewhere beer made from coca leaves, 
a traditional tipple in many parts of the country. Bud Light anyone?
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart