Coca

• 1. Introduction

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  Coca is a shrub native to western South America, and one of the oldest clues to its history was found in the floors of ancient houses in Peru's Nanchoc Valley. Archaeologists recovered coca leaves there together with calcite, which shows that people were chewing the leaf at least 8,000 years ago. The plant is known around the world because its leaves contain cocaine. Yet the leaf in its natural form is only a mild stimulant, taken by chewing or as tea. Absorption is slower than with the purified drug, and the source reports no evidence of addiction or withdrawal from this traditional use. So how did a bush with small yellowish-white flowers become both a sacred offering and a narcotic listed in an international treaty? Who first tamed the plant, and how many times did it happen? And why do governments still argue over whether a leaf and a drug are the same thing?

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• 2. Anatomy of a Shrub

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  Reaching 2 to 3 metres in height, the coca plant looks much like a blackthorn bush. Its branches curve, and its thin, opaque leaves are oval, tapering at both ends. A telling mark on each leaf is a zone bounded by two curved lines, one on either side of the midrib, most visible on the underside. The flowers are small, with five yellowish-white petals, and they ripen into red berries. The larvae of the moth Eloria noyesi sometimes feed on the leaves.

  In the Andes, farming follows a seasonal rhythm. Seeds are sown from December to January in small, sheltered plots called almacigas. When the young plants reach 40 to 60 centimetres, they move to final planting holes called aspi. Where the ground is level, they go into furrows called uachos instead. The plant thrives in hot, damp places such as forest clearings, though the most preferred leaves come from drier hillsides.

  The first and richest harvest arrives in March, after the rainy season. A second comes at the end of June, and a third in October or November. Only fresh new growth is picked, and a leaf is ready when it breaks on being bent. The plants themselves can range from one and a half years old to more than forty. The green leaves, known as matu, are spread in thin layers on coarse woollen cloths and dried in the sun. The sacks that hold them must stay dry to protect their quality. Those sacks carry one of four distinct crops, and their family tree turned out to be stranger than botanists first assumed.

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• 3. Four Crops, One Ancestor

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  A wild species named Erythroxylum gracilipes stands behind every cultivated coca plant. Genomic analysis indicates that different South American groups domesticated it two or three separate times during the Holocene. The crops divide into two species, each with two varieties. Erythroxylum coca includes var. coca, called Bolivian or Huánuco coca, which suits the humid montane forest of the eastern Andes in Peru and Bolivia. Its sibling, var. ipadu, is Amazonian coca, grown in the lowland Amazon Basin in Peru and Colombia.

  Erythroxylum novogranatense also has two varieties. Colombian coca, var. novogranatense, is a highland type that is used in lowland areas and grown in the drier regions of Colombia. Some groups in Venezuela and Colombia call these plants Hayo or Ayu. Trujillo coca, var. truxillense, is grown mainly in the Cajamarca and Amazonas states of Peru. It supplies the Empresa Nacional de la Coca S.A. and the leaf that Coca-Cola exports for flavoring.

  An early theory by Plowman and Bohm proposed a straight line of descent. In it, var. coca came first, Trujillo coca branched off as a drought-tolerant form, and Colombian coca followed from that. Genetic studies by Johnson and colleagues in 2005, and by Emche and colleagues and Islam in 2011, do not support this sequence. None of the four varieties is found in the wild, despite Plowman's speculation about wild populations in the Huánuco and San Martín provinces of Peru. Evidence of the early cultivators is scattered from Colombia to northern Chile, including the Las Vegas Culture in Ecuador and the Huaca Prieta site in Peru.

  A modern twist came with Boliviana negra, also called supercoca or la millionaria. This form resists glyphosate, a herbicide. Its emergence is attributed to Plan Colombia, the Colombian government's eradication campaign. Aerial spraying revealed resistant individual plants, and farmers then spread them among themselves. The source notes no evidence of genetic modification like that behind the glyphosate-resistant soybeans produced by Monsanto. Long before any herbicide, though, an empire had built its labor, its religion and its trade around the leaf.

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• 4. Empire Built on a Leaf

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  Under the Topa Inca, who ruled from 1471 to 1493, coca cultivation became a state monopoly. The plant was viewed as having a divine origin, so its use was limited to nobles and a few favored groups. These included court orators, couriers, favored public workers and the army. The Incas valued the leaf so highly that they colonized tropical rain forests to the north and east of their capital, Cuzco, to secure more of it. Coca is not frost-resistant and cannot grow above 2600 metres, so the humid lowlands were the only option. Gold representations of coca stood in special Inca gardens at Cuzco.

  The most common setting for the leaf was mit'a, the labor tax required of all able-bodied men, along with military service. Pedro Cieza de León wrote that the people of the Andes always seemed to have coca in their mouths. Laborers and soldiers chewed it to ease hunger and thirst while they worked and fought. Some historians believe coca and chicha, a fermented corn beer, helped the Incas move the huge stones of monolithic sites such as Sacsayhuamán.

  Spanish writers recorded the spiritual side. Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, Father Bernabé Cobo and Juan de Ulloa Mogollón noted that the Incas left coca leaves at important places across the empire. They considered it the highest form of plant offering. Leaves were placed in the mouths of mummies, including those of emperors, who were consulted on important matters long after their bodies had decayed. Mummies also carried bags of leaves. Sacrificial victims were sent to their deaths with a bag of coca. Ritual priests burned a mixture of coca and llama fat and read the future in the flame.

  As the Inca empire declined, the leaf became more widely available. After the Spanish conquest, attempts to eradicate it were haphazard. Philip II of Spain issued a decree recognizing the leaf as essential to the well-being of the Andean Indians, while urging missionaries to end its religious use. Local communities were allowed to keep using it to endure forced labor. The Spanish are believed to have encouraged wider use to raise output and tolerance for starvation, though it is unclear whether this was planned. Some Spaniards began growing and selling coca themselves.

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• 5. Chewing, Tea and Trade

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  In Bolivia, bags of coca leaves are sold in local markets and by street vendors. Chewing has many names: acullicar and chacchar come from Quechua, picchar from Aymara, and coquear is used in northwest Argentina. Slang adds bolear, from the ball of leaf pouched in the cheek. Typical intake runs from 20 to 60 grams a day, and the methods are believed to be unchanged from ancient times. Leaves are carried in a woven pouch called a chuspa or huallqui. A few are shaped into a quid, the acullico, held between mouth and gums. The result is a tingling numbness, like the once-ubiquitous dental anaesthetic novocaine, since cocaine and novocaine belong to the same amino ester class of local anesthetics.

  An alkaline additive releases the active ingredients. One option is ilucta, a preparation of quinoa ashes, which softens the astringent flavor. It goes by llipta in Peru and lejía in Spanish. The chewer uses a wooden stick, formerly often a spatula of precious metal, to move the corrosive substance into the quid without touching flesh. Around La Paz in Bolivia, the usual base is lejía dulce, or sweet lye, a soft black putty of quinoa ashes mixed with aniseed and cane sugar.

  In the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta on Colombia's Caribbean coast, the Kogi, Arhuaco and Wiwa use a device called the poporo. It is the mark of manhood, and men regard it as a companion that stands for food, woman, memory and meditation. When a boy is ready to marry, his mother initiates him in the use of coca. A Mamo, a traditional priest-teacher-leader, supervises the act.

  Coca tea, called mate de coca, reaches much further. Chewing is common mainly among indigenous people, but tea is drunk across every sector of society in the Andean countries. Teabags are sold in most grocery stores there, and tourist establishments typically serve it. It is legal in Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina and Ecuador.

  Commercial products have followed. Andean stores sell coca granola bars, cookies and hard candies, and the Peruvian government enterprise Enaco S.A. makes tea industrially. The herbal liqueur Agwa de Bolivia uses Bolivian leaf that is de-cocainized in Amsterdam. In December 2005, the Paeces, an indigenous community in Tierradentro, Cauca, began producing a fizzy drink called Coca Sek. It took about 150 kilograms of coca to make 3,000 bottles. Colombia's government abruptly banned the drink in May 2007, ending efforts to sell it widely.

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• 6. Chemistry and Medicine

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  Fresh coca leaves average 0.8 percent cocaine, within a range of about 0.3 to 1.5 percent. In dry leaves of var. coca the figure runs from 0.23 to 0.96 percent. Chewers take in 60 to 80 milligrams of cocaine each time, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Beyond cocaine, the leaf holds a long list of other alkaloids, among them benzoylecgonine, tropacocaine, cuscohygrine and hygrine. Chewing suppresses hunger, thirst, pain and fatigue.

  Timing separates leaf from powder. Almost all the alkaloid from a nasal dose of the purified form is absorbed within 20 minutes. From the raw leaf, concentrations take 2 to 12 hours to peak. In tea, between 59 and 90 percent of the alkaloid is absorbed. Coca has even been suggested as a way to help recovering cocaine addicts taper off the drug.

  Traditional medicine puts the leaf first as a remedy for fatigue, hunger and thirst, and it is considered particularly effective against altitude sickness. It has served as an anesthetic and painkiller for headache, rheumatism, wounds and sores. Before stronger anaesthetics existed, it was used for broken bones, childbirth and trepanning operations on the skull. Coca's high calcium content explains its use for fractures. Because it constricts blood vessels, it opposes bleeding, and coca seeds were used for nosebleeds. Other reported uses include malaria, ulcers, asthma and digestion, and modern studies have supported a number of them.

  The leaf is also food. Raw coca contains calcium, potassium and phosphorus, the vitamins B1, B2, C and E, and protein and fiber. Turning the leaf into cocaine is a different matter, since it takes several solvents and a procedure called acid-base extraction.

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• 7. Beyond the Andes

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  In the mid-19th century, an influential paper by Dr. Paolo Mantegazza praised the effects of coca on cognition, and Europe finally paid attention. Coca had first reached the continent in the 16th century without becoming popular. The paper led to coca wine, of which Vin Mariani was the best-known brand, and to the first production of pure cocaine. In 1859, Albert Niemann of the University of Göttingen isolated the chief alkaloid and named it cocaine. Coca wines and other preparations sold widely as patent medicines and tonics, with claims of a great variety of health benefits. The original Coca-Cola was among them, using coca leaf extract from 1885 until about 1903, when it switched to a decocainized extract. Outside South America, these products became illegal in most countries in the early 20th century, once the addictive nature of cocaine was widely recognized.

  By 1912, shipments of coca leaf from the Dutch colony of Java to Amsterdam, where it was processed into cocaine, reached 1000 tons. That overtook the Peruvian export market. Apart from the years of the First World War, Java stayed ahead of Peru until the end of the 1920s. Taiwan, then called Formosa, became the second-largest coca producer in Asia, behind only Java, and helped make Japan the world's leading exporter of cocaine. British attempts in India were relatively unsuccessful. Records also show coca grown in Ghana, the Ivory Coast and West Cameroon, though it never became important there.

  Today, Colombia, Peru and Bolivia hold more than 98 percent of the world's land planted with coca. Peru's main growing and trafficking activity has centered on the Upper Huallaga Valley since the 1980s. Yet plantations were discovered in Mexico in 2014 and in Honduras in 2020. In 2022, authorities destroyed over 6.5 million coca plants in Honduras, 4 million in Guatemala and more than half a million in southern Belize. By 2024, plantations found in Honduras had nearly doubled from the year before. Unlike the Andes, where small farmers typically grow coca, organized crime groups backed by major foreign cartels control the crop in Central America. A 2024 study found that 47 percent of Honduras, Guatemala and Belize has biophysical conditions highly suitable for coca. Even Hawaii has had a case: in December 2017, police on Kauai seized 15 mature plants in Kalalau Valley.

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• 8. A Leaf on Trial

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  On the 19th of September 2006, Bolivia's president Evo Morales held a coca leaf in his hand while addressing the United Nations General Assembly. He asserted "la coca no es cocaína", meaning the leaf is not cocaine. The treaty he was challenging was the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, which lists coca leaf on Schedule I beside cocaine and heroin. Article 26 requires parties to uproot wild coca bushes and destroy any that are illegally cultivated. Article 49 declared that "Coca leaf chewing must be abolished within twenty-five years from the coming into force of this Convention".

  The rationale came from a 1950 study by the Commission of Enquiry on the Coca Leaf, requested by Peru's permanent representative to the United Nations. The commission visited Bolivia and Peru briefly in 1949. It concluded that the effects of chewing were negative, even though it defined chewing as a habit rather than an addiction. Critics later attacked the report as arbitrary and imprecise, with racist connotations, and questioned its methods and its selective use of scientific literature.

  Peru and Bolivia won an amendment in the 1988 United Nations convention against illicit drug trafficking. Article 14 says eradication measures "should take due account of traditional licit use, where there is historic evidence of such use." Bolivia also lodged a reservation, declaring that "the coca leaf is not, in and of itself, a narcotic drug or psychotropic substance." The International Narcotics Control Board rejected both, saying the 1988 text does not absolve any party of its obligations under the other treaties. In its 1994 report, the board conceded that mate de coca was illegal under both conventions though that was not the intention, and called for a scientific review.

  Bolivia began a diplomatic effort in March 2009 to remove coca leaf from the 1961 list. Eighteen of 184 countries objected before the January 2011 deadline, among them the United States, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Japan and the Russian Federation. A single objection was enough to block the change. In June 2011, Bolivia moved to denounce the 1961 Convention. A World Health Organization critical review of the leaf followed, and a review scheduled for 2025 could lead to a recommendation on coca's classification.

  Since the 1980s, the United States has pressed coca-growing countries to restrict cultivation. Eradication has ranged from aerial herbicide spraying to incentives for alternative crops. Supporters say cocaine production far exceeds legal demand and funds insurgent groups. Critics say it hurts poor growers, damages the environment through glyphosate spraying, and fails to cut supply because cultivation simply moves elsewhere.

  The law abroad is harsher still. Canada lists coca leaf on Schedule I of its Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, and Australia places it in Schedule 9 of its Poisons Standard. Even so, in Maywood, New Jersey, a Stepan Company plant is a registered United States importer of coca leaf. It makes a cocaine-free extract used to flavor Coca-Cola.

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