A HALF CUT BATTLE IN A HEARTLESS US WAR

How would you feel if armed soldiers, financially coerced by a foreign power -- Bolivia, for example -- were to rampage through the vineyards of, say, Bordeaux, La Rioja, perhaps the Napa Valley, slashing and burning grapevines as part of a crusade against wine? How outraged would you be? Would it signal something terrifyingly Orwellian? How would you react?

Doubtless any self respecting plonk aficionado would be furious if a bunch of remote foreign politicians paid for localised eradication squads to rampage through the West's wine growing regions. The very idea is absurd.

Unless of course the situation were reversed and relocated to South America -- Bolivia, for example -- where the coercive foreign power is North America, and the vineyard is substituted with coca leaf plantation.

In an effort to deal at source with North America's adoration of Bolivian marching powder, the La Paz government has ceded to pressure from its super rich northern neighbour and is systematically destroying coca leaf crops on which thousands of campesinos depend for their livelihood. Last year 17,000 hectares of the crop were deliberately ruined in the tropical Chapare region alone, in a manoeuvre ironically named Operation Dignity.

The Bolivian government does not receive aid from North America unless they are seen to be actively participating in the so called war against drugs. Meanwhile, in the Chapare region and elsewhere, the poorest agricultural communities are facing financial hardship and cultural extinction in deference to North America's love of hoovering up white lines.

Cocaine, it must be said, is not a particularly interesting drug. In fact it is deadly boring, turning mild mannered people in ego driven dullards who spout speeded up drivel when not locked in the loo powdering their noses. Best kept for birthdays or Christmas (or more appropriately, New Year's Eve), regular cocaine overindulgence can lead to psychosis, bleeding nostrils, haemorrhaging bank accounts, bored friends, and -- as Daniella Westbrook has proven -- gruesomely ravaged septums.

Its thuggish cousin, crack, has long been associated with short, intense rushes and long, intense comedowns. Whereas coke may have some modicum of misplaced kudos as the whizzkid drug of choice, crack is quite a bit cheaper and widely associated with the desperation of a more economically challenged social strata. It is, therefore, not considered cool at all. Not to mention that it makes you crazy quicker than you can say crack whore.

Cocaine, as we know it in the West, has precious little to do with the coca growers of Chapare, and other South American regions similarly affected by North America's policy of tackling their own national drug misuse by blaming and aiming their wrath at foreign farming communities. The wraps of white powder chopped up in the affluent urban United States are as unconnected to the coca leaves of peasant tradition in rural Bolivia as Pakistani poppies are to Trainspotting. But try telling that to the Clinton administration.

The hardy versatile coca plant has been used by Andean people for thousands of years, medicinally, culturally and ritually. The leaves are loaded with vitamins and minerals, are an appetite suppressant and have a gently anaesthetic effect. As well as being chewed daily by the majority of Bolivians as a mild stimulant, coca is a well known cure for many ailments, from dysentery to altitude sickness. Used in many social and religious ceremonies, it is respectfully proffered in a range of rituals from birth to marriage to death in much the same way as we Westerners like to use wine at baptisms, weddings and funerals. This stuff is absolutely not cocaine.

It was, unsurprisingly, a white male Westerner who first extracted the 0.5% alkaloid cocaine from the coca leaf back in the 19th century. Ever since, the plant that has been carefully and conscientiously used for centuries has been blamed for the addictive excesses of everyone from jazz musicians right through to Oasis drug hogs and their ilk. The manic Sigmund Freud was the first famous cokehead -- he contracted nasal cancer from too much snorting. Saliva destroys the cocaine content of the plant. So, while the Bolivians serenely chew the leaf, we prefer to refine it, snort it and inject it, with our usual instant gratification led lack of restraint.

An 800 year old Andean oral ode to the plant, The Legend of Coca, spookily predicts the West's inability to deal with coca and respect it. While praising its quality: "Guard its leaves with love, and when you feel pain in your heart, hunger in your flesh and darkness in your mind, lift it to your mouth. You will find love for your pain, nourishment for your body and light for your mind." It warns: "If your oppressor arrives from the north, the white conqueror, the gold seeker, he will find only poison for his body and madness for his mind."

These days the oppressors from the north tend to be Americans. The US consume more than half of the world's cocaine, despite being just 5% of the global population. Europeans are rather fond of the stuff too. As prices drop to almost affordable levels, about pounds 50 a gramme in London, it has become the drug of choice for those who do not wish to appear that they are on drugs. Hence its popularity in the business world, especially among the overpaid -- it has been said that cocaine is God's way of telling you that you are earning too much.

To the humble coca farmer however, God is telling you nothing of the sort. The Bolivians saw a niche in the market and began growing the plant specifically for the United States cocaine market, in true North American taught capitalist style. "It's simply a question of supply and demand," according to Kathryn Ledebur of the Andean Information Network, a human rights organisation which publicises the problems caused by the coca eradication crusade. "It's pointless trying to stop production in the producer countries -- the place to fight is where the market is."

So now the farmers are forced to grow crops like beans and oranges instead of the more profitable coca leaf. As a result, the average family income has dropped from pounds 20 a week to about pounds 3 and most face serious hardship. Yet the slashing and burning continues to keep North American politicians happy as their citizens annually snuffle up and smoke tons of the stuff.

"The child in the US learns that he must buy things in order to be happy, whether it's Nike trainers or a gramme of cocaine," says Javier Castro of La Paz's coca museum. "That's the root of the problem. In the meantime they want to wipe out coca completely -- it's a kind of cultural genocide."

On a happier note, in order to circumvent North American pressure to decimate the plant, coca based products, marketed as legal pick me ups, are becoming popular in Bolivia. Toothpaste, pastilles and drinks are all sold legally and campaigners are hoping that thousands of coca based livelihoods could be saved by selling these products in the West, just as Brazilian guarana has become popular here with everyone from health enthusiasts to drug free clubbers. The ultimate screaming irony is that while coca leaf, as well as cocaine, is completely banned in the United States, the only company allowed to import it is permitted to bring 175,000 kilos of Chapare coca in each year -- to be used as (decocainised, of course) flavouring for, of all things, Coca Cola. Pepsi challenge, anyone?