Word: bolivia
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...hadn't imposed its 'war on drugs' in Bolivia, Morales might have been just another coca farmer," says Kathryn Ledebur, Director of the Andean Information Network, a Bolivia-based NGO that advocates a change in U.S. anti-drug policy. "He rose to national prominence resisting U.S.-supervised military drug control operations...
...Instead, Morales advocated state-initiated industry to mass produce and export healthy coca-based products (cookies, pasta, shampoo, wine, lotions) already manufactured on a small scale in Bolivia. The first of three state-run coca processing factories is currently under construction, with a view to turning 4,000 tons of coca into tea each year. At the same time, his government pledges ongoing eradication of excess coca, and strengthening of controls on narco-trafficking...
...However, what's rational for Bolivia doesn't necessarily fly for the United States: "There's really only one good use for the coca leaf in economic terms, and that's cocaine," the U.S. ambassador to Bolivia, Philip Goldberg, told the Associated Press late last year. Bolivians denounce this stance as hypocritical, since the largest legal market for coca leaves is actually the United States...
...always used coca leaves for flavoring," says Luis Cutipa, Bolivian Director of Coca Industrialization, explaining that until 2003, Illinois-based Stepan Chemicals, which imports coca leaf under license from the U.S. Department of Justice and is reported to supply a narcotic-free derivative to Coca-Cola, bought leaves from Bolivia. Now, it buys from Peru. (The Peruvian government disclosed in 2005 that 115 tons of leaves are sent annually to Stepan...
...secret formula, while Stepan did not respond to requests to discuss its relationship with Coca-Cola. This coca without the cocaine element is the only exemption allowed by the U.N. for the plant's usage outside of the Andes and it is not clear whether patent law would allow Bolivia to use the same process as Stepan does to remove the cocaine alkaloid...