By: Julia Sariol
For decades, the coca leaf has been viewed as the mere precursor to its chemically altered counterpart, cocaine, and the plant’s legal status around the world has reflected that dominant viewpoint for over half a century. Through renewed efforts to remove coca from the United Nations’ list of the world’s most dangerous drugs, however, Bolivia intends to change this notion in hopes that it will spur commercial growth and facilitate international acknowledgment of Indigenous communities’ rights and their longstanding use of the plant.
Coca is the raw, harvested leaf used to create cocaine via chemical alteration. In its unaltered state, the coca leaf is a mild stimulant that Indigenous communities across the Andes have chewed for millennia, a culturally significant practice that was enshrined in the 2009 Bolivian Constitution. Coca has medicinal properties that help individuals cope with fatigue and high altitude, and it can also be used in teas, soaps, and toothpaste. Although the crop’s cultivation is legal within Bolivia today and acts as a key contributor to the nation’s domestic economy, coca currently resides on the United Nations dangerous-drug list alongside narcotics fentanyl and heroin where it bears the label “highly addictive and liable to abuse.” The U.N. Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 classified the coca leaf as a dangerous narcotic together with cocaine, but as the third-largest producer of coca and cocaine, Bolivia partially opted out of the convention and went on to formally decriminalize the leaf’s use in the country. The Bolivian government hopes that downgrading coca’s restrictive status will spur global trade and rural commercial growth by encouraging Bolivian farmers to manufacture more products incorporating the leaf, including energy drinks, sodas, shampoos, and more. Furthermore, reclassifying the coca leaf’s legal status would increase scientific study of the plant and enhance global recognition and respect of Indigenous communities’ rights and historical uses of the plant.
Bolivian coca farmers and other critics have expressed concerns that declassification would fail to benefit Indigenous communities in practice once large international companies emerge as players in the legal coca market. Additionally, the United States has long opposed granting coca a less dangerous label because it believes doing so would lead to increased cocaine trafficking and hinder U.S. drug enforcement efforts to suppress coca cultivation.
