Why is coca leaf left out of the drug research renaissance

News

Why is coca leaf left out of the drug research renaissance

4 August 2016

By Yasmin Tayag

While marijuana, magic mushrooms, and ayahuasca have all found their way into research labs, coca leaf, the mother of cocaine, seems to be off-limits, despite evidence that the plant is a nutritional powerhouse and potential wellspring of medical cures.

This should come as a surprise to no one, says Pien Metaal, a researcher at the Transnational Institute, an Amsterdam-based think tank that advocates for drug policy reform. Policymakers purging the world of its vices, after all, have always been exceptionally thorough — often unnecessarily so.

“In theory, coca would be eligible for medical uses,” Metaal tells Inverse. “But it has never been seriously recognized because of the stigma it has, caused by its content of the alkaloid cocaine.” Obviously, cocaine the drug is a very legitimate public ill, causing some 5,500 deaths in the U.S. each year and thousands more wherever it’s trafficked and produced. But there are no such statistics to justify the demonization of coca leaf, Metaal points out. In fact, there never were.

Click here to read the full article.

Keep up-to-date with drug policy developments by subscribing to the IDPC Monthly Alert.

Thumbnail: Flickr CC wikipedia