Let Me Chew My Coca Leaves »
Posted By berkeley 9 months, 3 weeks ago in Political NewsIn 1961, the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs placed the coca leaf in the same category with cocaine — thus promoting the false notion that the coca leaf is a narcotic — and ordered that “coca leaf chewing must be abolished within 25 years from the coming into force of this convention.” Bolivia signed the convention in 1976, during the brutal dictatorship of Col. Hugo Banzer, and the 25-year deadline expired in 2001.
So for the past eight years, the millions of us who maintain the traditional practice of chewing coca have been, according to the convention, criminals who violate international law. This is an unacceptable and absurd state of affairs for Bolivians and other Andean peoples.
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berkeley
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. Of all the enemies to public ...
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Dionys9 months, 3 weeks ago
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Aside from cultural use (traditional, related to religious practice, et cetera), they're also used among those unused to traveling at higher elevations who suddenly want to climb large mountain ranges. Ask any American who's traveled with a good South American guide and climbed above 8-9k.
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