It is time to right the historical wrongs that led to the policy of subjecting the coca plant to absurd international controls

BY DIEGO GARCÍA-SAYAN

Published in El País on 07 March 2025

Less than two years ago, in July 2023, Bolivia sent an important official notification on the coca leaf to the World Health Organization (WHO), requesting the Expert Committee on Drug Dependence to conduct a critical review of the coca leaf, and to provide recommendations on its status under the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs.

What seemed a quasi-academic request has a profound and relevant historical and scientific meaning. It comes nearly 75 years after the United Nations called for the abolition of traditional uses of the coca plant. This is despite the fact that the coca leaf has been used for millennia by Indigenous Peoples of the Andean-Amazonian region for traditional, religious, ancestral and medicinal purposes.

A critical review

Internationally, the coca leaf is scheduled under the 1961 and 1988 Conventions along with cocaine, and it is subject to the same strict international control measures.

Furthermore, Article 49 of the 1961 Convention requires States to prohibit traditional uses of the coca leaf “within twenty-five years from the coming into force” of the Convention. This deadline has come and gone, and the prohibition has not been modified, which poses serious challenges on several levels.

At an event held during a session of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs, Bolivia’s Vice-President David Choquehuanca said the critical review was “an important step for drug control treaties as pertains to the rights of Indigenous Peoples”.

The removal of the coca leaf from schedules which entail prohibition would amount to greenlighting its natural use. And it would no longer be under international control as a narcotic drug. This would not affect the status of cocaine, which would remain scheduled, so the cultivation of coca to produce illegal cocaine would still be prohibited.

The rights of Indigenous Peoples

Francisco Cali Tzay, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Peoples, has clearly stated: “International drug control policies contradict the rights of Indigenous Peoples to self-determination, to the use of their natural resources, to their culture, agriculture and medicines, all rights enshrined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples” and in Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization (ILO).

This “prohibition” is quite burdensome. It stems from a contradiction in the 1988 UN Convention, whose Article 14.2 allows States to “take due account of traditional licit uses, where there is historic evidence of such use.” The Convention also emphasizes that, barring a few exceptions, these provisions cannot derogate from any previous treaty obligations, including those in the 1961 treaty limiting the use of the coca leaf to medical and scientific purposes (Article 4).

Article 27 only allows for “the use of coca leaves for the preparation of a flavoring agent, which shall not contain any alkaloids”. Thus, “decocainized” (not extracting or transforming the leaves into cocaine) coca products can be used as an ingredient in food or beverages (e.g., Coca-Cola). In addition, the coca leaf (like any other scheduled drug) may legitimately be used in industry for non-consumable products, such as cosmetics, dyes and fertilizers, provided that such products are not liable to be abused or have harmful effects, and that the harmful substances cannot in practice be recovered.

The time has come to right the historical wrongs in previous WHO positions which led to the policy of subjecting the plant to absurd international controls. These wrongs are especially striking in a context such as that of the Andean world, where the coca leaf has been consumed for centuries.

A report that has come into question

The mistake in the WHO decision stemmed from a report prepared by the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in 1950, following a study visit to Peru and Bolivia.

What was the local context back then? Peru was ruled by a military dictator – Manuel Odría – , who was imposed on the nation by the oligarchy, and had no connection at all with the Indigenous world. Meanwhile in Bolivia, instability prevailed (with five different presidents between 1943 and 1946), making dialogue difficult, especially for foreign observers.

Although the report found that coca chewing did not “constitute an addiction (toxicomanía), but a habit”, it was plagued by colonial prejudices. It completely ignored the known medicinal, nutritional, social, cultural and religious benefits of the coca leaf for Andean and Amazonian populations.

The report was later discussed at two different meetings of the Expert Committee on Drug Dependence (ECDD), in 1952 and 1954. The Committee reached the unsupported conclusion that coca chewing was “a form of cocainism,” and that it should therefore be abolished.

Despite the dictatorial and oligarchic regime in Peru and the centrifugal instability of the government in Bolivia, both countries questioned the report head-on, while demanding in vain a serious scientific study on the coca leaf. Their request fell on deaf ears. Four decades later, in 1992, the coca leaf issue reemerged on the agenda of WHO’s ECDD, at the behest of Bolivia, which brought up the coca leaf as one of the substances to be critically reviewed.

However, once again, a serious scientific and critical review of the plant was not conducted. The Expert Committee on Drug Dependence concluded that the coca leaf was “appropriately scheduled under the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961, since cocaine is readily extractable from the leaf”.

This pre-review process was carried out in parallel with the WHO/UNICRI Cocaine Project, which put forth a recommendation for WHO to research the therapeutic benefits of the coca leaf, as well as the impacts of enforcement measures on specific individuals and user populations. Everything seemed to be heading down the path of science and truth.

However, due to political pressure from the United States, the study was never officially published by WHO.

Striving for a critical review

Since 2023, Bolivia has gone back to seeking a critical review. In June of that year, President Luis Arce Catacora submitted to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres an official request for a critical review of the current scheduling of the coca leaf. The review process was officially initiated by WHO on November 30, 2023, and is now supported by Colombia. However, Peru, which is internally burdened by the corrupt covenant that governs it, has remained silent.

In the meantime, work is underway on a report that is expected to cover 18 questions, one of them being whether the coca leaf can be readily used to obtain cocaine. Science indicates that it is important not to confuse the terms “extraction” (which relates to concentration) with “conversion” (which relates to transformation), as extraction and conversion are not the same thing. Cocaine molecules are present in the plant material and can be extracted without any conversion.

In 1992, the Expert Committee on Drug Dependence concluded, without any supporting documentation, that the coca leaf was rightfully scheduled because “cocaine is readily extractable from the leaf.” It is undeniable that the coca leaf can be used as raw material in the manufacture of cocaine, but it does not meet the convertibility requirement of the 1961 Single Convention.

It had been proposed not to include the coca leaf, but raw cocaine (i.e. coca paste or cocaine base) in Schedule I of the Convention, defined as “any extract from the coca leaf which may be used for the production of cocaine.” In the end, however, a serious mistake was made by including the coca leaf by itself, as the standard of “ease of conversion” was not met.

In June/July of the current year, 2025, the World Health Organization will forward a questionnaire to “Ministers of Health of member States and international drug control agencies” in order to collect relevant information to be considered by the ECDD.

Sending the questionnaire to Indigenous Peoples

While this is standard practice, when it comes to the coca leaf it would be essential for WHO to extend the invitation to respond to the questionnaire to Indigenous Peoples in countries such as Bolivia, Colombia and Peru, and to relevant United Nations entities, in particular the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII), the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the International Labor Organization and the WHO Global Traditional Medicine Center.

This would allow WHO to obtain comprehensive information regarding the traditional uses of the plant. Input from civil society, academia and Indigenous Peoples, as well as responses to the questionnaire, should be taken into account in the critical review process.

The review report will be submitted by the experts and discussed by the ECDD at its 48th session, scheduled for September-October 2025. That session will include a public hearing, which will provide another opportunity for further written and oral input from representatives of Indigenous Peoples, civil society and academia. Close attention must be paid to this process.

Three recommendations

The Expert Committee on Drug Dependence could make three recommendations:

Option 1: Completely remove the coca leaf from the 1961 Single Convention schedules: this is the preferred option.

Option 2: Move the coca leaf from Schedule I to Schedule II of the 1961 Single Convention. The coca leaf would still be classified as a “narcotic drug” and would be subject to most of the treaty provisions.

Option 3. No change. The coca leaf would remain in Schedule I of the 1961 Single Convention. Results of the coca review would then be submitted to the CND, which would vote on ECDD recommendations, which would in turn be accepted or rejected by a simple majority of CND members.

What is needed is clear: to align the UN drug control regime with the Organization’s own human rights obligations, as well as with history, since the coca leaf has been used for millennia by the original inhabitants of the Andean-Amazonian region for traditional, religious, ancestral and medicinal purposes, and as a food supplement.