Bogota/La Paz. Colombia wants to support Bolivia in its efforts to finally remove the coca leaf from the international UN list of narcotics. As the Colombian Deputy Minister for Multilateral Affairs, Laura Gil, announced, a petition to this effect will be submitted jointly by both countries at the 66th session of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs from March 13th to 17th in Vienna.
Bolivia’s President Luis Arce had earlier reiterated the celebration of Acullico (coca leaf chewing) Day on January 11 required, “to remove the coca leaf definitively from the list of narcotics of the 1961 Convention”. The cocaine produced by chemical additives from the coca leaves is not included.
Since 1961, the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs has regulated the international control and combating of the cultivation, distribution and consumption of drugs.
In view of the millennia-old tradition of cultivating and chewing coca leaves in Bolivia, the government of the indigenous president and former coca farmer Evo Morales already proposed removing individual provisions of the ban on coca leaves. After that push was rejected, Bolivia withdrew from the accord in 2012, pending a legal caveat allowing chewing, potting and other non-illegal uses of coca leaf on its territory, to seek rejoining that same year.
Since only 15 of the required 62 states (including Germany) voted against it, Bolivia has been an official member again since January 1, 2013. 2016 explained the Morales government prohibited the chewing of the coca leaf by law on the “intangible cultural heritage of the Plurinational State of Bolivia”.
The recent push to remove the coca leaf from the list of narcotics has economic reasons in addition to destigmatizing coca farmers. Because apart from the limited cultivation and use of the coca plant for ritual and medicinal purposes in Bolivia, any trade and export of the leaves is prohibited by international regulations.
As the founding of the state company Kokabol shows, the Bolivian governing party MAS (Movimiento al Socialismo) is planning industrialization and one by President Arce proclaimed “free commercialization of our coca leaf and its derivatives”. Bolivia has the third largest area under coca cultivation in the world, behind Colombia and Peru.
In Colombia, on the other hand, since left-wing President Gustavo Petro took office in 2022, there has been a paradigm shift in national and international drug policy. After Petro’s highly acclaimed speech to the UN General Assembly in September last year, in which he condemned the decades-long “war on drugs” in the USA and the West as a failure, the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna is to lay the foundations for a new drug policy presented become. Central to this is a new perspective on the drug trafficking value chain, designed primarily to punish the powerful and protect the most vulnerable, such as coca farmers and young people who use drugs or are involved in drug trafficking.
“We insist that it is not the weakest link in the chain that should be attacked, but the mafia behind it,” stressed Minister Gil to do public health.
Opponents of the US-proclaimed “war on drugs” criticize the fact that this program harms the demand countries and the international banking system, in which billions of dollars in drug money are stolen circulate and a supporting function fulfill, takes responsibility. In his UN speech, the Colombian President criticized the fact that “the market” and profit were not taken into account.
In Germany receive the two Andean countries received support from the “Schildower Kreis”, a scientific network for drug policy, which advocates the initiative and calls on the federal government to support it. “Coca leaves belong to the culture of indigenous peoples in the Andean region and are traditionally used for health and religious purposes. The previous ban is pharmacologically and toxicologically unfounded and has brought ecological and social damage to the affected region.”
The recognition and protection of indigenous rights also plays an important role in the legalization of the coca leaf. Recently the knowledge system of the ancestors of the four indigenous peoples Arhuaco, Kankuamo, Kogui and Wiwa of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in the representative list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity by Unesco recorded Indigenous representatives could not bring traditional coca leaves to the conference in Morocco because of the ban take along.
The “Schildower Kreis” also confirms this view: “The removal of coca leaves and their use from the UN banned list would enable progress in terms of development and environmental policy. In addition, this step would be an important signal demonstrating respect for indigenous cultures.”