Coca and Cocaine in the Andes

University of Aachen, Germany
Economic Development
U.S . Business Culture & Economic Development

Coca and Cocaine in the Andes Countries

by

Robert Mihelli

Presented on June 7th 2002

Contens

1. Introduction  4

2. The Coca Plant  5

3. History  6

4. Usage  7

5. Production of Cocaine  7

6. Cocaine Powder  8

7. Cultivation  8
7.1. Bolivia  9
7.2. Peru  10

8. A Global Problem  11

9. Issues  11

10. Solutions  12

11. Conclusion  13

Bibliography  15

Appendix  16

Figure and Table Content
Figure 1: The Andes Countries  5
Figure 2: Erythroxilum Coca  6
Figure 3: Coca Cultivation in Bolivia  9
Figure 4: Coca Cultivation in Peru  10

Table 1: The Cocaine Production  7
Table 2: The Effects  8
Table 3: Coca Fields in Chapare 1965-2001  9
Table 4: Population Development in Cocochamba, Bolivia  10
Table 5: The Countries in Figures  11
Table 6: The Fight Against Drugs  12

U.S . Business Culture & Economic Development

Coca and Cocaine in the Andes Countries

" I thought cocaine was a fantastic drug. A wonder drug, like everybody else. It gave you [an] energy burst. You could stay awake for days on end, and it was just marvelous and I didn′t think it was evil at all. I put it almost in the same category as marijuana, only hell of a lot better. It was a tremendous energy boost. But eventually everybody knew how evil it really was. It was the greatest feeling I ever had. Followed abruptly by the worst feeling I ever had."

George Jung is a lifetime convicted U.S. drug trafficker, portrayed by Johnny Depp in the movie "Blow" (2001). Drugs determined and destroyed his life.

1. INTRODUCTION

Andean farmers have good financial reasons for continuing to grow coca, and it is unlikely that the economic equation can be substantially altered. Cocaine is as cheap and plentiful as ever on U.S. streets, the biggest market for cocaine; the State Department estimates that 1999 coca production increased. The current U.S. retail cocaine market is somewhere between $30 billion and $150 billion¹. Efforts at interdiction and crop substitution have failed, the former because the amounts of cocaine imported are so large that seizures have little overall impact, the latter both because alternative crops are intrinsically less lucrative and because there is no infrastructure to bring such crops to market. The U.S. General Accounting Office report to Congress argued that crop substitution was unlikely to succeed, and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has calculated the cost of raw coca as making up less than 1 percent of the retail cost of refined cocaine in the U.S. The latter statistic means that traffickers could easily afford to increase what they pay for raw coca if a shortage occurred, thereby stimulating production.

Fig. 1: The Andes Countries 

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In order to explain why the andean Countries prefer to grow coca, it is important to understand that the coca plant is a part of the culture, as history shows and there is a difference between the existence of coca and cocaine. The usage and the production of the coca plant changed in the last hundred years, and the monocultural development carry tremendous illegal capacities. But on the other hand, it is originally a cultural heritage. To explain this issue one must know where it is cultivated, why and what problems it causes for the Andean Countries, and not only for these countries, but on a global scale. 

2. THE COCA PLANT 

The Coca Plant is one of the oldest cultivation plants in Latin America. It is a shrubby tree 3 meter high when cultivated². There are proximately 250 varieties, 200 in Latin America. Only a few varieties are good for use; for chewing or for cocaine derivation. Trees start yielding in eighteen months and are often productive over fifty years. The leaves are gathered three times a year; the first crop in spring, second in June, and third in October; must always be collected in dry weather. There are two varieties in commerce, the Huanuco Coca ("boliviana"), South Ecuador, Andes, Peru to Bolivia, and has leaves of a brownish-green color, oval, entire and glabrous, with a rather bitter taste, and Peruvian Coca (yields on dry fields Peru coast, known also as "coca trujillo"), the leaves of which are much smaller and a pale green color.

[....]

1 Eg. U.S. State Department: Drug Abuse Statistics, Washington, 2001, p. 7.

2 The tree is 12 (3,7m) to 18 (5,5m) feet high in the wild state and kept down to about 6 feet when cultivated.