BOLIVIA: Morales Takes Coca Campaign to U.N.

Haider Rivzi

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 21 2006 (IPS) – Bolivian President Evo Morales is telling the world what he says it has been unwilling to acknowledge for the past half a century that coca is not the same as cocaine.
This is coca, he said, taking a leaf from his jacket pocket and displaying it to the world leaders who packed the United Nations General Assembly hall Wednesday. This is not cocaine.

Defending the right of indigenous communities in his country to grow coca, he called for changes in international efforts to counter the global illicit drug problem, which mainly focus on the destruction of the crop instead of controlling the demand for narcotics.

To Morales, the coca leaf does not merely provide a livelihood for indigenous communities in the Andean region, but it is also used for religious and medical purposes.

It is part of our national identity, he told IPS at a news conference. It represents the community and its collectivity for the indigenous people.

Morales, who was elected last December to become the first-ever indigenous president in South America, said he plans to hold a series of meetings with the U.N. officials to elaborate on his government s position on this issue.
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Reiterating their position that coca is a narcotic and that its traditional use is illegal, officials at the U.N. drug watchdog agency suggested that they might be on a collision course with the Morales government.

The treaty is very, very clear on coca leaf, said Melvyn Levitsky, a member of the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), following the release of a global study on the use and production of narcotics.

Since 1961, the U.N. has established three treaties on drug control and Bolivia has signed on to all of them.

The Bolivian president countered the U.N. position by arguing that the consensus on coca is largely based on Eurocentric studies conducted between 1949 and 1952. The investigations carried out by the Geneva-based World Health Organisation (WHO) at that time considered it harmful, but more recent studies show opposite results, he said.

Coca does not harm human health, he told IPS, citing a study by Harvard University which he said concluded that coca leaf is the best food in the world. They (researchers) not only recommend chewing it, but eating it.

In the 1975 study, Harvard researchers noted that while an eight-ounce glass of milk has about 300 milligrammes of calcium, a 3.5-ounce coca leaf contains 1,540 milligrammes of calcium.

The pharmacologically active ingredient of coca is the alkaloid cocaine, found in concentrations of about 0.2 percent in fresh leaves. In raw form, coca is a mild stimulant and appetite suppressant. Studies have found little evidence that habitual coca use leads to any of the harmful health effects associated with regular cocaine use.

Morales said coca production is generally geared toward processing for export because there is a growing demand for hard drugs in the industrialised world, which is also responsible for the supply of chemicals used to make refined cocaine.

In the United States alone, the cocaine trade was estimated at more than 35 billion dollars in 2003.

I would ask the developed countries to understand that there is need to reduce the demand, he said. If we don t reduce the demand, the cocaine business will continue.

He urged industrialised countries to take steps against the private banking industry that is responsible for moving millions and billions of dollars of drug money from one country to another.

In response to a question, he criticised the U.S.-sponsored aerial spraying of coca crops grown by the indigenous communities of neighbouring Colombia.

They have spent a great deal of money, but what is the result? Almost nothing, he told IPS, adding that militaristic or repressive action is not a solution at all.

The socialist leader also defended his decision to nationalise natural resources, saying the socioeconomic conditions of the country could no longer afford a capitalistic and colonial economic model of development. However, he dismissed speculation that his government would drive out all foreign companies that have invested in Bolivia.

There is no expulsion of companies, he said. They have the right to earnings. But we need partners, not owners or bosses of our national resources.

On Tuesday, he met various U.S.-based investors from the energy and transport sectors and said that he tried to convince them that they should continue to do business in his country.

Morales said he fully supported neighbouring Venezuela s candidacy for U.N. Security Council membership and praised President Hugo Chavez for his initiatives to address the issues of economic and social justice.

Like Morales, during his speech to the General assembly, Chavez defended his socialist policies and vehemently criticised the United States government for its hegemonic and imperialist role in world economy and politics.

In a hard-hitting speech, Chavez called the U.S. government the first enemy of the people and said his country fully stood with Iran and Syria, two nations accused by Washington of backing terrorism.

Yesterday, the devil came here, Chavez said, referring to U.S. President George W. Bush, who spoke to the General Assembly Tuesday. Right here. right here. And it still smells of sulfur today, this table that I am now standing at today.

Making the sign of the cross, he added: Ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the president of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil, came here talking as if he owned the world. Truly, as the owner of the world.