Coca, one of the most significant plants in the world, grows in South America. It is cultivated in warm and humid valleys, known in the local Aymara language as yungas. Andean peasants chew it while working and resting and even treat their guests with it. The habit of chewing - not only accepted but widely spread among millions of inhabitants in countries such as Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina and Chile - has an economic basis. For peasants coca is a most beneficial crop because of its ability to yield three to four harvests a year, in nonarable soils. In fact, a detailed description of its leaf concludes that, due to its richness in amino acids and vitamins, the coca plant is the Earth's most complete plant in non-proteinic nitrogen. This kind of nitrogen eliminates toxins and pathogens from the human body, also hydrating and regulating the nervous system.

History

Andean peasants praise coca for its profitability, in comparison with other crops. Its very specific farming technique is well adapted to the valleys through the construction of stone or walled ground platforms. Raising coca in the Andean valley is an ancestral custom. Since about 2000 BC, the leaf has been intertwined with local life. Andeans not only utilised it for conveying friendship, repaying services or simply as a coin, but also considered it sacred. Besides discovering its medicinal powers, they employed the leaf, mixed with certain oils, to soften rocks.

When the Incas politically centralised the area, plantations were located all across the empire in order to maintain a stable production, the Incas being the sole proprietors of sacred harvests. Later on, once the Spaniards imposed themselves in the area, the Spanish Crown distributed these plantations among some colonos under the encomiendas regime, and payment
with coca leaves was authorised.

When the Spaniards conquered the continent and discovered coca's energising properties, they encouraged consumption in order to increase the productivity of the natives they forced to work in the Potosi mines. As a result, the coca trade became an important revenue source for the Spanish Crown, second only to mine exploitation. Tithes on coca contributed almost all of the Andean Catholic Church's funds.

In this way, coca entered the market economy, and colonial society adopted the plant, fully incorporating it in its habits and manners to the extent that physicians employed it as a medicine for asthma, haemorrhages, toothache, vomiting and diarrhoea.

Criminalisation

Nevertheless, despite its early assimilation by colonial society, Spaniards were not reluctant to blame the natives' ritual use of the coca leaf for delaying their conversion to Christianity - thus beginning the long fight against its consumption. When decolonisation brought independent states in the region, the plant was once again accused, this time of blocking the natives' assimilation into 'white' society.

However, it was the emergence of cocaine -- one of the 14 alkaloids of the plant -- which ignited the black history of this bush. Soon after being isolated in 1884, cocaine began to be used as an anaesthetic in surgery, with the likes of Sigmund Freud recommending it as a relief for nervous stress and fatigue. Towards the end of the 19th century, cocaine consumption extended through the upper classes and the artistic circles of both Europe and the US. Vin Mariani, a tonic based on the coca extract, was prescribed by every physician as a cure for several diseases. In this, its origins were similar to those of Coca-Cola patented in 1895 as a stimulant and headache reliever which originally contained cocaine.

But in 1906, the US authorities made cocaine illegal by officially declaring it was a narcotic and then prohibiting its import, together with the coca leaves. In spite of the prohibition -- or eventually because of it --- all through the century cocaine has become highly appreciated and consumed.

The UN Convention for Narcotics placed cocaine on its toxic drugs first page, listing it as 'psychotropic' in 1961. But the truth is that its rocketing price makes cocaine one of the most profitable businesses on Earth. In financial, artistic and political milieus from Western Europe and the US, cocaine is regarded as synonymous with opulence and distinction, also being consumed in Japan, Eastern Europe and Latin America, though to a lesser degree.

Narcotraffic

Cocaine's desirability has launched a fabulous business -- more lucrative than oil and second only to the warfare business -- known as narcotraffic. This word defines the entire process of illegal production, transportation and selling of illegal and controlled drugs. In this transnational game, each one plays its role.

The USA, Europe and France sustain a strong demand, while Andean countries like Peru, Bolivia and Colombia supply the product. In these latter countries, coca consumption still differs from the one developed in the North. While the use of cocaine paste expands among the young floating population, the natives and peasants -- while disliking the paste -- still preserve the habit of daily chewing.

The coca-producing regions have been transformed by this trade into developing zones, because drug cartels extend credit and insurance to the groups that produce cocaine. Cocaplanting peasants have increased their incomes: raising the leaf means much more profit than raising any other crop. In Bolivia, coca and its by-products generate a revenue of $600
million a year, and provide jobs for 20 per cent of the adult labour force. In Peru, the coca industry occupies 15 per cent of the active labour force and reports a yearly income of $1 billion.

In Colombia, the drugs trade provides a revenue of $1 billion, a sum higher than coffee exports. The main gain, however, belongs to the consumer countries, where the money laundering is undertaken, chemicals for cocaine production are supplied and weapons to sustain drug dealers are sold.

Hypocrisy

The basic point about this amazing business seems to be its hypocrisy. In the US, more than $100 billion has been spent on arrests, imprisonment, education and other action since President Ronald Reagan initiated his "war against drugs" in 1983. But, in the period from 1983 to 1993, the death by drug abuse rate doubled, while assassinations linked to drug-trafficking trebled. Statistics reveal that in 1992, in the US, 12,000 people died from drug abuse and 2,000 more from drug-related murders.

The worst statistics for drug casualties are for adults between 35 and 50 years old, who in 1983 accounted for 80 per cent of the total drug casualties. Ten years later, the risk of dying by drug abuse was 15 times greater for people in their forties than for university students. And yet US authorities in charge of the fight against drugs give no explanation for these figures. They just present statistics showing an increase in the relatively low rate of teenagers who smoke marijuana.

At present, the US market almost entirely absorbs Latin American drug production (as well as a third of the world's heroin and 80 per cent of its marijuana). Drug consumers in that country amount to 20 million, but in order to solve this domestic problem, the US policy is to fight it abroad. This exclusively domestic issue of drug consumption has been turned into one of the favourite excuses for US intervention abroad, the creation of the Drug

Enforcement Agency (DEA) in July 1973 being one of the fundamental steps to institutionalise this. This cocaine colonialism has led to a disregard for other countries' sovereignty. A 1992 US Supreme Court judgement, legalising the kidnapping of drugs suspects in other countries, carries with it a very serious threat to human rights, and mocks international law.

The US approach to the popularity of cocaine is a classic example of misrepresenting the real problem. Drug consumption has become the object of a crusade, projecting the evil onto the producer and not onto the consumer onto the 'other' and not onto oneself. Today, many respectable voices can be heard proposing that drugs such as cocaine should be legalised, as a
first step to solving some of the problems created by the prohibitions - such as the high price, which often leads to corruption and violence, or the bad quality of the final product, that endangers health. Such a move would not only remove the carpet from beneath the feet of the corrupt, but would decriminalise large sections of a society wracked by many more serious problems.