THINGS GO BETTER WITH COCA?

Imagine for a moment Premier Gordon Campbell writing an Op Ed column
in The New York Times complaining about international condemnation of
B.C. Bud and extolling the continuing "ritual, religious and cultural
significance" of this condiment for British Columbians.

That's more or less what happened last week when Bolivian President
Evo Morales wrote in the New York-based newspaper defending the right
of his people -- and, indeed, all Andean peoples -- to keep up their
5,000-year-long tradition of chewing the coca leaf.

Morales was complaining about the 1961 United Nations Single
Convention on Narcotic Drugs, which places the coca leaf in the same
category as its enriched derivative cocaine -- and alongside cannabis
- -- under which Bolivia was required to eradicate coca chewing by
2001. Morales said chewing coca is no more harmful or addictive than
a cup of coffee and far less so than smoking another alkaloid drug, tobacco.

Meanwhile neigbouring Peru is battling its own problems with the coca
leaf and has come up with an imaginative solution. Since Shining Path
guerrillas failed to take power in their 20-year war in which 70,000
people died, they have turned to cocaine production and trafficking.
Like Morales, the Peruvian coca farmers contend the leaf is not
narcotic unless made into cocaine. To prove it they are starting to
market for export to China and elsewhere beer made from coca leaves,
a traditional tipple in many parts of the country. Bud Light anyone?