The Powerful Coca Leaf

The coca plant is part of the cultural fabric of the northern Andes. Inca nobility chewed the plant, as suggested by the discovery of pre-Columbian statues with bulging cheeks–presumably crammed with coca leaves. The same practice was observed by the explorer Amerigo Vespucci in what is now northern Venezuela during his first voyage around the world, in 1499.

Miners in the Andes have long used coca leaves to suppress hunger and induce a mild euphoria to help them ignore the cold. Others use them as an anesthetic or to ward off altitude sickness. For many, coca leaves are simply a cure-all. “Hot or cold, it’s a different kind of drink, good for the stomach. It reduces weight. It restores energy,” proclaims an advertisement for coca tea in Peru, where the marketing of coca-based products is quite legal.

The most common of the 200 strains of coca is Lamarck, a shrub that grows in the eastern foothills of the Andes. It is a hardy, deep-rooted perennial that can be harvested a mere six months after planting and then as often as three times a year. It can also survive for up to 30 years, growing stronger with age.

Arriving at village processing facilities in 50-kilo bales, the harvested leaves are laid out in the sun to dry. They are then soaked in a solution of water and kerosene, which releases the cocaine contained in the leaves. Peasants stomp on the soaking mixture for several hours to turn it into coca paste, which is then mixed with sulfuric acid, lime, potassium permanganate and more kerosene. The cream-colored substance that is left after the liquid is squeezed out is coca base, the raw material that is sent to refineries to be turned into cocaine. This transformation is accomplished by combining the paste with ether and acetone to remove impurities, and filtering the mixture through tightly woven cloth, leaving a slurry. When this is dried in its turn, it becomes concentrated cocaine hydrochloride, so potent that consumption could lead to seizures or death. The pure cocaine is cut with substances such as sugar, talcum powder or flour to produce the high-priced “snow” sold on the street.

It takes 300 kilos of coca leaves to produce three kilos of paste and one kilo of pure cocaine. The markup in price, according to current U.S. estimates, is no less dramatic. A dollar’s worth of leaves costs a trafficker less than $3 as paste and a consumer on the streets of Miami $315 as white powder. Smoking the much cheaper raw coca paste has therefore increasingly become a popular high throughout South America. In Bolivia a matchboxful of paste, enough to make 100 cigarettes, sells for as little as 50 cents. Warns Dr. Ronald Siegel, a psychopharmacologist at the UCLA School of Medicine: “If the price stays low, coca paste could become epidemic here too.”