A Modest Proposal to Clarify the Status of Coca in the United Nations Conventions

The implementation of anti-drug policies that focus on illicit crops in theAndean countries faces many significant obstacles, one of which is the culturalclash it generates between the main stakeholders. On the one handone finds the governments and agencies that attempt to implement cropsubstitution and eradication policies and on the other the peasant and nativescommunities that have traditionally grown and used coca or those peasantswho have found in coca an instrument of power and political leverage thatthey never had before. The confrontation about coca eradication, alternativedevelopment and other anti-drug policies in coca growing areas transcendsdrug related issues and is part of a wider and deeper confrontation thatreflects the long-term unsolved conflicts of the Andean societies....