Politics of coca leaves

Okay, let me just begin by stating I am not a druggie, never have been and never will be.

Then let me direct you to LatinoUSA.org There you can inform yourself a bit to the current issues surrounding the coca plant, from which cocaine is produced. The coca leaf has been in use in native indigenous Latin American cultures for eons, and has even been used by yours truly and close friends, government officials, etc. as a remedy for soroche, or altitude sickness, in the Andean highlands. Merely drinking mate de coca or chewing the leaves, which most natives do, will result in nothing more than a slightly numb feeling of the tongue, much akin to eating a stick of raw celery (no es verdad, j?) It is through a chemical process that cocaine is produced.

The United States, in its unending quest to rid the country of All Things Bad For You, erroneously believes that eradicating all coca plants in the world will end cocaine production. Much as the case with meth, synthetics will constantly arise...the problem does not lie in the indigenous use of the coca plant and the destruction of their customs, although the US tends to be very imperialistic in that sense, ignorantly calling for the mass destruction of all cultural phenomena in the name of the U.S. War on Drugs. The Aymara, the Quechua, the numerous indigenous who incorporate coca leaves are not the drug lords and do not deserve to have their livelihoods robbed from them in the name of millions of dollars of U.S. aid to, for example, Peru's government.

We need to stop and ask ourselves, is it really worth it? Aren't there better ways we can spend our non-existent money, anyway?