The UN Wants to Put Me in Jail for My Morning Cup of Tea

[Elrik]

The UN Wants to Put Me in Jail for My Morning Cup of Tea

by Jim Schultz

A funny thing happened in Vienna last week. A United Nations special panel on narcotics called on the governments of Bolivia and Peru to make drinking a popular and traditional herbal tea a criminal offense.

The target of the International Narcotics Control Board is the tea made with coca leaves. Known here as “mate de coca” the tea can be made directly from the leaves or from commercially produced little tea bags (a la Lipton). It is served, among other places, in the U.S. Embassy in La Paz and to all arriving guests at the five-star Radisson Hotel. In fact, the U.S. State Department formally recommends the tea to visitors from the U.S. to help with the effects of high altitude.

So, why does the UN think that people who drink the tea should be prosecuted? Because it is the product of a small green leaf, coca, which through heavy chemical alteration can be morphed into cocaine. This is the story of how bureaucratic blindness results in stupid public policy.

The “Coca” in Coca-Cola

Coca has been a part of Andean culture for more than 4,000 years. It was used by Incan religious leaders as a sacrament. The small green leaf acts as a mild stimulant, and eases the effects of living and working at high altitude. It also diminishes the appetite, making the chewing of the leaves popular with miners, construction workers, farmers and others who toil long hours.

To those (including, evidently, a good number of global policy makers) who think that drinking coca tea or chewing coca leaves will offer up something akin to an excursion on LSD or magic mushrooms, think again. It’s “kick” is almost unnoticeable, nothing in comparison to a “Grande” (Spanish for “big”, Starbucks for “small”, go figure) cappuccino. In this regard, as both a drinker of coca tea and an addict to afternoon caffeine, I speak with authority.

In 1860, a German chemist figured out that the coca leaf also contained a very small trace of an alkaloid that could be leached out of the plant with chemicals such as kerosene and bleach, and concentrated into a white powder, cocaine. Soon after the powder became considered a medical marvel, embraced by everyone from the Pope to Sigmund Freud to President Ulysses Grant. Coca-Cola followed, in the 1880s, as an elixir of cocaine and caffeine.

By the early 1900s policy makers in the U.S. decided that maybe mass use of cocaine wasn’t such a good idea, and approved a law banning it. Coca-Cola followed suit in 1929, keeping the coca leaf in for flavor, but taking out the cocaine.

But in the effort to sweep cocaine under the carpet, global policy makers went overboard and tossed the unaltered coca leaf in with it. In 1961, the UN developed a formal list of “narcotics” banned from international export, such as heroin and cocaine. Based on a 1950 report, long on old school racism and short on actual science, the UN added the coca leaf to the list as well.

That is roughly akin to banning corn because it might be used to make moonshine. Nevertheless, a study penned in the day when modernity was still defined by the weight of chrome car bumpers is the basis for global drug policy in 2008. Alcohol and nicotine, both far more damaging than coca tea, to be sure, are not on the list.

The “ban coca tea” recommendation from the UN last week is not, by the panel’s own admittance, based on any science or finding that drinking coca tea or chewing coca leaves is harmful. In fact, studies by the World Health Organization have found that the use of coca leaves is neither harmful or addictive. Nope, the UN panel’s action was an act of simple bureaucratic consistency. If the coca leaf is on the international narcotics list, the panel argued, then governments ought to prosecute any use of it in any form. Dumb follows stupid.

Coca in Bolivia

Don Pio was a friend of mine, a small and aging house builder who I never saw without his felt hat on his head and a wad of green coca leaves in his mouth. Boasting coca’s ability to suppress his appetite, Don Pio once told me, “Ayyy, if it weren’t for coca I’d be running to the refrigerator every half an hour and I’d never get any work done. And I’d be fat too.”

When he died of old age two years ago I looked into the grave where he had just been lowered and realized that no one had remembered to toss in a bag of green coca leaves to accompany him on his trip to the next world. We held up the filling of the grave until someone among the bereaved could come up with coca to toss in after him.

You will not find a construction site in Cochabamba where the workers do not have a wad of green leaves in their mouths. You will be hard pressed to find a farmer working in his or her field without chewing those same leaves. Coca is, in these parts of Bolivian culture, exactly what a morning cup of coffee is in the U.S., though again, with a far less narcotic kick than well-prepared caffeine.

To be sure, not all of the coca grown in Bolivia is benignly brewed into herbal tea or stashed between the cheek and gum. In the 1980s, a good deal of Bolivian coca was destined for the cocaine market, making the country a key target in the U.S. War on Drugs. Through a combination of forced eradication (including a massive trampling on Bolivian civil rights) and the move of the cocaine industry to Colombia, Bolivia’s participation in the cocaine trade was reduced to a trickle. But the war on the coca leaf continued.

So Much for Alternatives

Today, with a former coca grower, Evo Morales, in the Presidency, it is unclear how much of the green leaf grown here ends up headed for processing into narcotics, but it may still be as much as half. Morales has mandated a new approach, “coca si, cocaina no” based on two basic ideas. First, commit coca growing communities to voluntary limits on how much they grow, instead of sending in troops and U.S. advisors to burn their crops. Second, build up markets for non-narcotic coca products, from tea to toothpaste, to give the subsistence farmers who grow coca a chance to make a living in an honest way.

And that is where a UN list set in stone 47 years ago puts up a ridiculous and damaging roadblock. As long as the coca leaf, separate from cocaine, remains on the list, Bolivia can’t export coca tea to any of its potentially lucrative foreign buyers — from health food stores in California to mass markets in China. Selling Bolivian coca to foreign markets would help an economy that badly needs a boost and would create a far happier end use of those leaves than having them turned into crack a hemisphere away.

But again, bureaucratic silliness, allied by a lack of general public understanding, stands in the way. Coca is to cocaine what grapes are to wine. So, now if they come for me you’ll know why. Bottoms up.

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[Torsten]

I wouldn't call a simple extraction "heavy chemical alteration". But yeah, this is a sad move.

[Auxin]

That may be because your well educated Torsten. To the average layman the process of chemically extracting a single minor component from a plant would be perceived as a heavy chemical alteration of the material regardless if the chemical structure of that single component was unaltered or not.

The UN should have rules against letting themselves dictate policies or make demands of governments when they dont even understand the science and/or sociology at play in the situation.

[Torsten]

a crude coca paste that is about 50% pure cocaine can be made by simply boiling down a tea of the leaves. That's as simple as it gets.

I think this whole attack on the plant misses the point. The point is not that the plant is dangerous, but the greedy fucks who turn it into cocaine are. I mean, imagine someone worked out how to turn caffeine into an LSD-like active drug in a simple batch process and suddenly the UN wanted to ban coffee and tea. How would we feel? They are only getting away with it because they are in the financial dominance. Cocaine is only a major problem in a handful of countries, most importantly the USA. So the UN punishes these small countries and destroys their traditions and livelihoods simply to solve a problem the USA created for itself. That's fucked up.

[Stonehenge]

This shows how more bureaucracy leads to more stupidity. Those who saw the UN as a wonderful advance are in the same group who thought communism was a wonderful advance. Human greed and lust for power makes those systems worse than what we have now. All drugs should be legalized.

[Vertmorpheus]

ahhh... not sure how to approach this one. Reeks of bullshit, of course, especially given the amount of straight laced western types that get over there, have a chew or a sip, expecting chorus of angels and whatnot, only to find that hey wow.... I don't feel quite as altitude sick as I did before and I'm a touch more talkative. Bullshit... its never the healthy users of things that influence law somehow, its the minority of those that do the "wrong things".

On the other hand.... bit of a leap here.... I hear overall there's been a fair reduction of late in the amount of coca being rfown annual in much of SA, for various reasons... climate, legal, not worth the risk of having a large patch because the DEA might cropdust your house, your kids and your years supply of fresh veggies... BUT...global demand for coke is still right up there. Maybe its a matter of kickbacks n setbacks, and the cartels etc still want the same output but theres less green leaf to start with... so if they can get the local consumption kept to a minimum, it leaves more for them to cook up. OR something.

Might sound backwards...makes sense to me. Not like members of the UN havent been found to be acting in collusion with gangsters, child traffickers, gun runners and big business of all persuasions in the past.

Pure bullshit, imagine if instead of caffeine as T was gettin at, from tea n coffee we took to cleaning it up and flogging it on the footpath as "methylxanthine" yeah man, got some fuckin wicked MXT... got all the kiddies into superhigh and dangerous doses of it just for a brief sensation of pleasure but with some downsides as well.

just leave people alone, please.

VM

[Teotzlcoatl]

I always take the stance, that all plants should be 100% legal, living and dried.

All drugs (such as cocaine) should be 100% illegal or at least morally and socailly unacceptable.

just leave people alone, please.

Edited March 14, 2008 by Teotz'

[Auxin]

The problem with that teotz is who gets to define good vs. bad drugs and how far they get to go in punishing those 'evil drug abusers'

At one point in russia the penalty for the crime of ingesting powdered tobacco was to have your nose cut off.

In europe tea was once seen as a tool of satan and people were tortured and murdered for drinking tea.

And in more recent history people are put in prisons that do not meet humanitarian standards for use of entheogens to help overcome addiction to hard drugs and alcohol.

I'm not arguing that meth and crack should be legal but we best be damn careful who we let write policies.

They came first for the crack heads,

and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a crack head.

Then they came for the junkies,

and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a junkie.

Then they came for the stoners,

and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a stoner.

Then they came for the boozers,

and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a boozer.

Then they came for me,

and by that time no one was left to speak up.

[mark80]

what I find the most shocking is that there using bleach to extract it......

[Torsten]

what I find the most shocking is that there using bleach to extract it......

Firstly, this sounds like the 'battery acid & draincleaner' propaganda re MDMA.

secondly, what's so bad about bleach?

[mark80]

Firstly, this sounds like the 'battery acid & draincleaner' propaganda re MDMA.

secondly, what's so bad about bleach?

nothing.

But who uses bleach to extarct coke? (maybe they do?)

[t st tantra]

with the current hotspell in adelaide coca tea would have been benefical to the productivity/economy.....and prob humanitarian too.....iboga or kratom prob also used to deal with the heat.

t s t .

[Torsten]

I don't like coca, so can't tell if this is any good in the heat.

I don't think ibo would be any good either as it tends to cause all sorts of temp fluctuations.

Kratom however is f*cking brilliant for hot days. The Thai's know what they are on about with this stuff. Back in the day when it was legal I would often consume just a leaf or two to get me through an hour of summer heat. But geez, after a day of this it really catches up on you.

[Teljkon]

asdf

Edited December 19, 2021 by Teljkon

[t st tantra]

back when it was legal i only seemed to get reasonable effects from kratom when it was hot,when cool it didnt seem to work......maybe seasonal variation in the leaf?....but 3 or 4 leaves as a quid and i was cruisin until i took the quid out....old qid turns black but can be reused.....lasts hours if not chewed!

star j etc also seemed more effective in the heat,no temp fluctuations or probs noticed at low dose.

also other things seem to work less effectively,i think there must be quite maked changes in metabolism due to heat?

t s t .

[Zakmalados]

Nothing should be illegal. That just creates a black market and drives use underground. Prohition is an utterly failed social policy. The harms that it creates are so obviously worse than the harms it supposedly addresses that I cannot have any faith in the politicians that promote it. I think that a large number of them are perfectly well aware that prohibition doesn't work, but they've built an industry on it and can't back up now. They feed on the misery it creates.

Any suggestion that some sort of modified prohibition can succeed is hopelessly naive.

Zak

[Teljkon]

asdfasdf

Edited December 19, 2021 by Teljkon

[Garbage]

The UN makes provision for indiginous people,the organisation considers them on one day of the year.

Other than that it's a poliical forum for those addicted to suckling on the tax tit.

That is their culture,rather crude really.