Coca Yes, Cocaine No?

Legal Options for the Coca Leaf

Martin Jelsma

Pien Metaal

Ricardo Soberon

Mario Argandoña, Anthony Henman, Ximena Echeverría

May 9 2006

This issue of Drugs and Conflict explains the motives, context and range of the demand to remove the coca leaf from strict international drugs controls, as well as the procedures that need to be followed to reach this objective.

Download the report Coca yes, cocaine no (369 KB)

A simple leaf of an ancient plant will feature prominently on the international agenda this year. As international relations and specialised mechanisms for managing the international drugs trade have evolved, a decade-old demand to remove the coca leaf from strict international drugs controls has come to the fore again in recent months.

Time has come to repair an historical error responsible for including the leaf amongst the most hazardous classified substances, having caused severe consequences for the Andean region.

This issue of Drugs and Conflict explains the motives, context and range of this petition, as well as the procedures that need to be followed to reach this objective. For every member of the international community, this year will become a moment to decide whether to maintain coca under the control of the UN Conventions, or to dare recognize this mistake and show the will to correct it.

Pages:

20pages

Edition:

Transnational Institute

Series:

Drugs & Conflict Debate Papers Nr. 13

ISSN:

1871-3408

Martin Jelsma

TNI Drugs and Democracy Programme Coordinator

Martin Jelsma is a political scientist who has specialised in Latin America and international drugs policy. In 2005, he received the Alfred R. Lindesmith Award for Achievement in the Field of Scholarship, which stated that Jelsma "is increasingly recognized as one of, if not the, outstanding strategists in terms of how international institutions deal with drugs and drug policy."

In 1995 he initiated and has since co-oordinated TNI's Drugs & Democracy Programme which focuses on drugs and conflict studies with a focus on the Andean/Amazon region, Burma/Myanmar and Afghanistan, and on the analysis and dialogues around international drug policy making processes (with a special focus on the UN drug control system). Martin is a regular speaker at international policy conferences and advises various NGOs and government officials on developments in the drugs field. He is co-editor of the TNI Drugs & Conflict debate papers and the Drug Policy Briefing series.

Pien Metaal

Ricardo Soberon

Ricardo Soberón Garrido, member of TNI's Drugs & Democracy team, is a Peruvian lawyer and analyst on drug trafficking and counter-narcotics policies in the Andean region.

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