PRODUCTS FROM COCA LEAF ARE TOUGH SELL

Bolivians Push Healthful Use Of Blacklisted Plant

Special to the Chronicle COCHABAMBA, Bolivia -- Eguil
Paz, a devoted evangelical Protestant and a retired army officer,
hasn't sniffed cocaine in his strait-laced life.

Yet he is one of Bolivia's most ardent defenders of coca, the tropical
plant and source of one of the world's most destructive drugs. Paz is
the founder of Coincoca, a small factory run out of his daughter's
house that makes tea, holistic medicines, ointments and toothpaste out
of coca leaves.

At a time when U.S.-backed eradication teams are bent on wiping out
coca crops in South America, Paz is one of a handful of activists
trying to promote the healthful properties of coca and convince the
world that coca is not cocaine.

"If people would use coca as coca, it would be very beneficial," Paz
said in an interview at the Coincoca plant in the Bolivian city of
Cochabamba. Demonizing the leaf "is like condemning sugar cane because
it's used to make alcohol, or iron because it's turned into tanks and
weapons of war."

Cocaine, the narcotic alkaloid extracted from the coca leaf with the
help of several chemicals, was invented by Europeans in the late 1800s
and lauded by Sigmund Freud in his influential article "Uber Coca."

But domestication and use of the coca leaf in its natural state dates
back to about 2500 BC. It was one of the first cultivated crops in
South America and was viewed by Indians as a gift from the Sun God.

When chewed, the leaves act as a mild stimulant and ward off hunger
and thirst. Although they were first repulsed by the practice, Spanish
conquistadors in South America eventually endorsed coca because it
allowed Indian slaves to work longer hours in silver and gold mines.

"Forced labor in the mines was founded on the practice of chewing coca
leaves," said Jorge Hurtado, a psychologist who has opened a coca
museum in the Bolivian capital of La Paz, and has an Internet Web site
dedicated to the plant.

Coca leaves are high in calcium and vitamins and facilitate the
oxygenation of the blood, which is why coca tea can help offset
altitude sickness and is often served to tourists in the Bolivian highlands.

Hurtado is also experimenting with the leaves as a way to wean addicts
off cocaine, similar to the way methadone helps heroin addicts. In
neighboring Peru, the National Coca Enterprise, a state-run agency, is
investigating ways to sell legal coca products and has produced videos
and books aimed at changing public attitudes toward the plant.

Today, Indians, students, miners and truck drivers all chew coca.
Indians use the leaves in religious ceremonies. The Bolivian
government allows legal cultivation of about 30,000 acres of coca for
internal consumption, and large bags of the leaves are sold at
open-air markets.

Cuban President Fidel Castro, Queen Sofia of Spai and former Spanish
President Felipe Gonzalez chewed coca leaves during state visits to
Bolivia. Coca tea is served at embassies in La Paz and sold at airport
duty-free shops.

But efforts to promote coca leaf products -- which could provide an
alternative market for coca farmers who usually sell to drug dealers
- -- have been waylaid by misconceptions and the U.S.-sponsored war on
drugs in South America.

In Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, U.S.-backed police and soldiers are
attempting to chop down or fumigate thousands of acres of coca. Yet
peasant farmers are sowing new fields just as fast.

This refusal to differentiate between the plant and the drug was
sanctioned by the United Nations.

Coca leaves contain just 0.5 percent of the alkaloid cocaine, and
there is no evidence that they are addictive. But after heavy U.S.
lobbying at the 1961 U.N. Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the
world body placed coca on its Schedule One, the list of the most
dangerous and restricted substances.

As an officially blacklisted plant, the leaves and natural coca-leaf
products cannot be exported, except for a small amount used in the
flavoring of Coca-Cola.

When former President Jaime Paz Zamora tried to bring coca leaves to
Seville, Spain, to promote coca products at Expo '92, the shipment was
impounded by customs agents.

Carlos Prado, an Indian healer in Cochabamba said restrictions are so
tight that he was unable to bring 20 coca leaves with him to a recent
conference of holistic doctors in Mexico.

Even coca tea has been controversial because it contains traces of
cocaine. During World Cup soccer qualifying matches in Bolivia in
1993, two players failed drug tests and were suspended until
investigators concluded that they had been sipping coca tea.

"There is a mix of mystery and prejudice that surrounds coca," said
Marcelo Ferofino, general manager of Hansa Ltd., a La Paz firm that
wants to export coca tea to Asia, Europe and the United States.

"Many people think that drinking a cup of coca tea will automatically
make you high," he said. "Some will try to put 10 tea bags in a cup,
but nothing will happen."

This lust for narcotic pleasure and the resulting demand for cocaine
and crack in the world's industrial democracies has tainted the image
of what should be a respected and valued plant, said Andrew Weil,
holistic physician and author.

"What is clear is that our civilization's failure to understand the
sacred leaf of South American Indians, how to respect it and use it
wisely, has cost us dearly," Weil wrote in a 1995 essay in The New
Yorker magazine.

As a result, the market for coca tea and coca-based ointments and
syrups -- which are sold as digestive aids, laxatives and as
treatments for rheumatism and hemorrhoids -- is limited. There is
little official support for the industry at home and exports are banned.

A U.S. lawyer, who travels frequently to Bolivia, said that if
alternative coca products caught on, farmers at the bottom rung of the
drug trade could earn just as much by selling their leaves to
legitimate buyers.

"If coca wasn't used in cocaine," she said, "it would be seen as a
completely acceptable herb that's probably better for the body than
coffee."

Checked-by: Patrick Henry