Mar 27, 2003
Coca. Cocaine. Spot the difference.
UPDATE: I wrote to Ananova to point out the mistranslation and they have since corrected the story and acknowledged that the original wording was misleading.
New cocaine sweet ‘will help people relax’
A company in Peru is developing a sweet made out of a mixture of caramel and cocaine….
[Ananova story]
Talk about sensationalism. Talk about ignorance. Talk about mistranslation. Talk about fact-checking.
Mrs Lazo added: “I want to demystify the use of cocaine leaves. In many parts people chew or make tea with them to fight altitude sickness.”
Cocaine is not the same thing as coca. One is a manufactured drug, the other is a leaf on a bush with traditional medicinal and ritual uses. It tastes like henna hair dye. It comes in teabags, and in handfuls, fresh from the market – so why not sweets?
Potatoes aren’t vodka, are they? Is someone was going to make a sweet with a potato base, would the tabloids be up in arms about the possibility of pissed children?
We’ve said it before, but not for a while, so let’s go over it again:
La coca no es cocaine: Coca is not cocaine.
Coca is a naturally ocurring mild plant stimulant (see also caffiene; sugar; tobacco; kola nuts) which has many traditional cultural uses in the Andean region, such as chewing or brewing in tea to alleviate stomach upsets and the effects of altitude sickness. Coca leaves can also be used as a highly effective compress on wounds, a well-recognised anti-nauseant (used in pregnancy, by the ill and by those affected by altitude sickness), and as a hunger-supressant, most frequently utilised by Bolivian miners to prolong working stints. Coca leaves are among the most significant ritual items of the Quechua, Aymara and Mapuche cultural groups (descendants of the Inka civilisation, and now numbering around eleven million people in the Andean region), who use them as sacrificial offerings to deities, as well as traditional items of ritual exchange, currency and cookery.
Cocaine, however, is a white powder, based on the stimulating properties of the coca leaf, but activated and intensified using mixing agents such as bleach and other chemicals, which is almost exclusively consumed in western nations by advertising executives who think they’re really funny and that everyone must be interested in what they’re saying. The overwhelming majority of (illegal) revenue made from the manufacture, trafficking and selling of cocaine also remains outside the countries which traditionally produce coca.
To create one gram of cocaine, around a ton of coca leaves are needed. It is only possible to chew around thirty coca leaves in the mouth at any one time. The stimulating effects of this amount of coca can last for up to ten hours, if chewed constantly; longer if the wad is stored in the cheek and chewed periodically. The stimulation is roughly equivalent to the effects of two strong cups of coffee, or one buy-it-in-your-local-newsagent-or-campus-store Pro Plus caffiene tablet. However, the effects of the stimulant are vastly decreased at altitude, and are barely noticable. You get more buzz from half a beer, or a single cigarette.
Bolivia and Peru have repeatedly been put under international pressure to stop growing coca. Bolivia is by far the poorest country in South America, and has become increasingly dependant on international aid and loans in recent years. Bolivia was categorically told by Clinton and other world leaders in 1995 that if coca production didn’t cease entirely by 2000, aid packages would stop and the loans would be called in. Peru and Colombia are expected to be forced into similar situations in coming years.
Coca is a very efficient crop – it can be grown on inhospitable terrain, is not seasonal, can be harvested three or four times a year, has a high acreage/yield ratio and can be harvested and transported to market by a small number of people. This has made it the principal traditional family smallholding crop of choice.
The US and UN recommended that Bolivian farmers could grow pineapples instead of coca, but refused to guarantee purchase of this highly specialised fruit crop. And besides, one person can easily carry a basket of coca to market on their back – the same is not true of pineapples. Now the UN is looking into developing special fungi to attack the coca crops of Colombia and Peru, to knock out production at the grassroots. Biological warfare?
I’m sorry but this whole situation just makes me mad. Coca isn’t the same as cocaine. Small-time farmers are being economically and politically targetted for production of a traditional crop which has been grown, farmed and used naturally and harmlessly in the region for thousands of years. They’re not even the ones who supply coca leaves to cocaine manufacturers: they’re the ones who show up in La Cancha market in Cochabamba on a Friday morning, feet dusty from the road and backs sore from hauling a sack of leaves, who set up their open sack in the central part of the market and sell other locals a handful of leaves (about fifty) and a chunk of banana or lime ash paste to chew it with, for less than one boliviano: about twelve pence. It’s the Bolivian equivalent of chewing gum.
Coca is the big evil bogeyman, though. It’s easier that way. When all the countries were setting up their pavillions at the Sevilla expo in 1992, Bolivia wanted to bring a pile of coca leaves, and give a single one to each visitor to their stand. They were not allowed. It is illegal to transport coca across international boundaries – even if it comes in the form of a mate de coca teabag or a single leaf pressed between two sheets of perspex, as a souvenir key ring.
Coca is not cocaine. It’s a traditional plant, with hundreds of traditional uses. Western nations are attempting to wipe out their domestic drug problems by eradicating the crops, traditions, economies and livelihoods of poorer third world nations. Does that seem fair? Alcoholism is a pretty serious issue in the UK – I propose we head on over to Ireland and dig up all the potatoes, even though potatoes aren’t vodka either. That sounds just about as fair to me.
So let’s just go over this one more time: when someone mentions coca they don’t automatically mean cocaine. To assume they do is mistranslation, or ignorance.
