The Coca Plant: Bolivia's Cultural Heritage, the War on Drugs, American Hypocrisy

Mervyn Claxton

02/02/2011

Opinión

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An article in last week's issue of the Economist, entitled "The coca leaf: storm in an Andean teacup", begins with the following paragraph:

"TOURISTS who visit Boliviaʼs capital, La Paz, or Cusco, Peruʼs former Inca seat, are routinely given welcome cups of coca tea to mitigate soroche (altitude sickness). For centuries, people who live in the high Andes have chewed coca leaves, whose alkaloids act as a mild stimulant and help to ward off cold and hunger. The Spanish conquistadors declared coca a tool of the devil, until they saw how it improved the work rate of the Indians they sent down the mines."

In January 2009, Bolivia's president Evo Morales, whom the Western press regularly (not at all innocently) describes as a former coca leaf planter, submitted a new constitution (the country's 17th) to a national referendum. The constitution was reformulated to reflect Bolivia's indigenous reality. Fifty-five percent of Bolivia's population is Amerindian and a further thirty percent are mestizo. The referendum, in which 90% of the population participated, was approved by a plurality of 61% of the electorate. Bolivia's previous constitution (which was adopted in 1967) had been drafted, and approved by the country's Parliament without the participation of a single indigenous person. In addition to making all of Bolivia's 36 native languages official languages, together with Spanish, the 2009 constitution granted the country's indigenous groups rights to administer their own resources, to levy taxes and allocate funds, to make their own laws and to administer community justice, provided that national laws are not violated.

Perhaps the most controversial provision (for the United States and its Western allies) in Bolivia's new Constitution is the one that protects coca and its traditional usage, on the grounds that it forms part of the countryʼs cultural heritage. Article 384 of the new constitution (Fourth Part, Title II, Chapter Seven: Coca) stipulates:

"The State shall protect native and ancestral coca as cultural patrimony, a renewable natural resource of Bolivia's biodiversity, and as a factor of social cohesion; in its natural state it is not a narcotic. Its revaluing, production,

commercialization, and industrialization shall be regulated by law." (My emphasis).

The Economist article, recalling that the 1961 United Nations Convention on Narcotics banned the ancestral production and consumption of coca leaves, while giving Andean countries 25 years to make the practice illegal, reports that Bolivia proposed an amendment to the Convention which would remove the obligation on Andean countries to prohibit traditional uses of coca. That proposed amendment, which obtained the support of other South American countries and would have been adopted if none of the signatories to the convention raised any official objection before the end of January 2011, was opposed two weeks ago by the United States. The latter claimed that tolerating the traditional use of coca would undermine international efforts to suppress the cocaine trade.

The Economist article offered the following illuminating comment on America's last minute objection to Bolivia's proposed amendment: "Yet this smacks of hypocrisy. The United Statesʼ State Department's website recommends coca tea for altitude sickness, and its La Paz embassy has been known to serve it to visitors. The UNʼs declaration on indigenous peoples, which the United States endorsed last month, guarantees the protection of “cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions." (My emphasis).

Bolivia had threatened to withdraw from the Convention on Narcotics if its proposal to protect that aspect of its cultural heritage was rejected. It would be interesting to know whether Caricom countries joined those in South America in expressing support for Bolivia's proposed amendment, or whether they were cowed into silence. The charge of hypocrisy, levelled by the Economist against the United States, is reinforced by the fact that, in the first half of the 20th century, cocaine use was not only legal in the United States but was also lauded, and even recommended, by national organizations as well as a number of eminent American personalities.

When the production and consumption of alcohol was made illegal in the United States in 1919, ushering in the era of Prohibition, its place was taken by cola drinks laced with cocaine. Cocaine was declared to be the best way to escape from addiction to alcohol, opium and morphine and also proposed as an excellent general tonic. The Surgeon- General of the U.S. army made it publicly known that he took a wine glass of cocaine with every meal. Furthermore, cocaine was adopted by the American Hay Fever Association as the official remedy for hay fever. (Theodore Zeldin, An Intimate History of Humanity,1994).

A professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, who was also President of the American Philosophical Society, recommended cocaine as an aid to those "who wished to be true and religious Americans", for it offered “an exaltation of our better mental qualities, a warmer glow of benevolence, a disposition to do great things but nobly and beneficially, a higher devotional spirit and withal a stronger self-reliance and consciousness of power. It seems to make the individual, for the time, a better and greater man”. (Zeldin, 1994).

It is significant, that the "coca" clause in Bolivia's new constitution validates the protection of the traditional practice not only because it is part of the country's cultural heritage but also on the grounds that coca is "a renewable natural resource of Bolivia's biodiversity". In the crucially important policy area of designated dangerous drugs, Caricom and other countries of the Global South must beware of automatically aligning their national interests, policies, and actions with the vagaries of America's policies which, as illustrated by the history of cocaine use in the U.S., are driven by passing domestic trends, national preoccupations, and the prevailing ideology.

In a subsequent contribution, I shall make a case for Caricom adopting, and actively promoting, the widespread cultivation of the hemp plant (industrial hemp, as opposed to the narcotic variety), which I consider could make a major contribution both to sustainable development and to developing an alternative agriculture that is respectful of the environment. Industrial hemp (or agricultural hemp, as it is sometimes called) is arguably the most versatile plant known to man, in terms of its industrial, commercial, agricultural and nutrition potential as well as its environmental protection capability.

Industrial hemp and marijuana are both classified by taxonomists as Cannabis sativa, a species with hundreds of varieties. Nonetheless, the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) perversely insists on wrongly classifying all Cannabis sativa varieties as "marijuana". THC (delta 9 tetrahydrocannabinol), is the primary psychoactive ingredient in marijuana. There is a scientifically significant difference between industrial hemp, which has a THC content of between 0.05 and 1%, and marijuana with its THC content of 3% to 20%. Only Cannabis sativa varieties with a THC content of 3% and above possess narcotic properties.

The DEA's lumping together of all the hundreds of varieties of Cannabis sativa under the signal designation "marijuana" effectively makes the domestic cultivation of industrial hemp illegal. Unfortunately, the repercussions of that domestic policy transcends American national frontiers, for it has a deterrent effect on the policies of small countries and those, like Caricom, which come within the U.S sphere of influence. Major countries, like Canada, Australia, and those in the European Union, which are strong enough to resist American pressure to align their domestic policies with those of the U.S., have recognized the tremendous economic potential of industrial hemp by legalizing its cultivation within the past decade.

It is not without interest to note that, like cocaine, the cultivation of industrial hemp was not only legal in the United States (up to the 1950s) but that the American government also actively promoted its cultivation during World War 11, designating it a strategic product of great national importance. American farmers who grew hemp were exempt from military duty, and a film entitled "Hemp For Victory" that was commissioned by the U.S.

Department of Agriculture in 1942, extolled the agricultural importance of hemp and urged American farmers to plant hundreds of thousands of acres of hemp as their contribution to the war effort.

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