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Science Forum Index » Medicine - Nutrition Forum » OT: coca - ok for US Coca-Cola company to export but....
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| Tunderbar |
 Posted: Thu Mar 08, 2007 1:56 pm |
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http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/news/world/16859544.htm
Bolivia plans to export coca in face of treaty
By Tyler Bridges
McClatchy Newspapers
(MCT)
LAUCA ENE, Bolivia - The steel girders and brick walls going up on a
muddy plot here wouldn't normally merit a second glance.
But the building, a small factory that will allow Bolivia to export
coca tea and other coca-related products to Venezuela, is putting
President Evo Morales on a collision course with Washington and the
United Nations.
Morales sees the factory - and a second one being built elsewhere in
Bolivia - as putting money in the pockets of poor coca growers while
reducing the availability of the raw leaf for drug traffickers to
produce cocaine.
But the International Narcotics Control Board, a U.N. entity, says
Morales' plan violates a 1961 international anti-drug agreement signed
by both Bolivia and Venezuela.
"What Morales is saying is not in line with the 1961 Convention, and
Bolivia knows this," Koli Kouame, the board's secretary, said by
telephone from its base in Vienna.
Asked whether exporting coca was legal, Morales told The Miami Herald:
"I don't have to ask permission from anyone to produce coca
products ... Just like in the past we used coca for the benefits of
humanity, now we'll industrialize it. We don't have evil ends in
mind."
To justify his actions, Morales cited two examples.
One is Coca-Cola's purchase of coca leaves from Peru. Kouame said
that's legal because Coca-Cola processes the leaves to remove the
alkaloid used for cocaine.
Morales also said South Africa imports coca from Peru. Kouame said
South Africa has not signed the 1961 Convention.
The issue of coca farming - legal if restricted in Bolivia, where
people have long chewed or brewed the leaves into tea for health and
cultural uses - has vexed Morales since he took office one year ago.
The Bush administration has demanded that he continue his
predecessors' policy of eradicating illegal coca plants. But forced
eradication angers coca growers, who form the president's most loyal
constituency.
Indeed, Morales grew to prominence as the leader of a coca growers'
federation, a post he still retains.
Morales recently decreed that Bolivia could legally grow 20,000
hectares of coca, up from the previous legal limit of 12,000 hectares.
One hectare equals 2.47 acres.
U.N. reports indicate, however, that actual cultivation is 25,000
hectares. The Bolivian government has acknowledged that only about
half goes to traditional, legal uses.
Morales' government hasn't fully explained how much coca will go to
the factory for export, but coca growers estimate no more than 2,000
hectares per year. That would be only 10-15 percent of the excess,
illegal production.
Jim Shultz, a U.S. citizen who runs a research-oriented non-profit in
the Bolivian city of Cochabamba that is sympathetic to Morales,
believes the U.S. government should support a change in the 1961
Convention to allow Bolivia to export coca products.
"U.S. policy has been to try to get coca growers to produce bananas
and pineapples, while using repression through forced eradication,"
Shultz said. "It has never worked" because coca generates at least
double the income of any alternative.
"If Bolivia could soak up some of the crop for export, that would seem
to be a good thing."
Morales made the same point to The Miami Herald in an interview Feb.
18.
"We want to have other products for coca so it won't go to the illegal
market," he said.
Enter Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez, Washington's biggest
headache in South America and a generous Morales ally.
He has donated $250,000 to Bolivia to build the two factories and
agreed to import the coca tea, even though Venezuelans have no
tradition of drinking the brew.
U.S. officials fear that coca leaves, once exported, would be turned
into cocaine and that the new export market would only encourage more
cultivation of illegal coca.
The International Narcotics Control Board seems virtually powerless to
stop Bolivia from exporting coca products. Kouame said the board could
only punish Bolivia by barring it from importing internationally
controlled drugs such as morphine and codeine. The board has never
sanctioned a country since 1961, he added.
The factory in Lauca Ene, due to be finished in three months, is in
the Chapare, a lush area in the heart of Bolivia where virtually all
the coca produced is refined into cocaine, U.S. and U.N. anti-drug
officials say. The other factory will be in the Yungas region, to the
west, where coca has traditionally been grown for legal uses.
"We've been asking for this for a long time," said Felipe Munoz, who
heads the Lauca Ene coca growers federation, as he visited the factory
site. "Other governments didn't listen to us. Evo has."
He leaned against a partially-built brick wall.
"The U.S. government pressures us to reduce coca production," he
added. "Hugo Chavez helps us without conditions."
***
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