Bolivia Touts Coca Flour As Way For Addicts To Kick Habit
Bolivia has already developed a type of beer using the base product of cocaine, but the Andean nation wants to further diversify its controversial coca crop into a market that literally deals in “dough.”
At the Fourth International Coca Leaf Forum, hosted by the Bolivian government in the capital of La Paz, the international drug policy expert Martin Jelsma of the Transnational Institute said that mild doses of the stimulant coca – such as that in cooking flour made from coca – could help drug addicts kick their habit to cocaine.
"We must seek opportunities to influence the market. It has been very difficult to reduce the international market for strong, illegal stimulants illegal, " he said, according to EFE news agency. But you can make "an attempt to recapture that market with mild stimulants that are controlled and lawful."
Jelsma noted that coca flour is not only seen as a more acceptable alternative stimulant than chewing coca leaves, but could also be exported more easily to other countries than the bulky leaves.
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