Last week, the U.N.’s International Narcotics Control Board strongly recommended that Peru and Bolivia ban coca chewing and the use of coca in mass-consumption products such as flour and tea.
Both countries criticized and publicly rejected the INCB’s recommendation. In Peru, dozens of lawmakers chewed coca during a Congress meeting to protest the ban.
In Bolivia, 5,000 coca growers demonstrated in La Paz to defend their right to grow coca. Bolivia’s president Evo Morales is pushing to have the coca leaf removed from the United Nation’s list of dangerous drugs.
Morales announced plans to spend $300,000 to develop markets for the plant and increase the number of acres that coca can be grown on.
Bolivia is the poorest country in South America. Coca farmers, primarily Indigenous, rely on the legal production of coca to feed their families.
