Arce anticipated that he will seek the “declassification” of the coca leaf as a “narcotic” from the treaty signed in the 1961 Convention on Narcotic Drugs.
“The injustice that is committed with our coca leaf… In 1961 it was included in the list of the Convention on Narcotic Drugs. Chewing was prohibited and in our government we managed to decriminalize chewing, but the battle that we have to fight does not stop there. to free, because the objective is to definitively achieve the declassification of the list of the 1961 Convention and achieve the free commercialization of coca and its derivatives,” the president remarked.
The head of state reviewed the benefits of the bush that is grown in Los Yungas, in the department of La Paz and in the Cochabamba tropics, from consumption and its benefits for health, to “reading” the coca leaf.
“We make these announcements and in the logic of the industrialization of the improvement of production because this coca leaf has a lot to give humanity to the planet. We are convinced that Bolivia can be one of the fundamental countries that promotes its industrialization and is known the qualities of our sacred coca leaf on the planet,” Arce said, according to the state agency ABI and the newspaper Página Siete.
The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs was held in New York on March 30, 1961, and there the drug was defined as “any of the substances in Schedules I and II, natural or synthetic.”
The text recognizes in its preamble that the medical use of narcotic drugs is essential to alleviate pain and that the signatory States of the Treaty must adopt “the necessary measures to guarantee the availability of narcotic drugs for this purpose.”
List I applies to substances that “are highly addictive or likely to be misused, and precursors that can be converted into narcotics that are equally addictive and also likely to be misused,” while List II refers to compounds that are “less addictive and whose misuse is less likely than those in list I”, which includes the coca leaf.
Arce announced the future location of a research center and another for the industrialization of the leaf in Las Yungas, an Andean Amazonian territory north of La Paz.
The facilities will be of a scientific nature and aim to make the qualities of the coca leaf known “on the planet,” said Arce, escorted by Vice President David Choquehuanca.
The president promised “added value to the coca leaf so that it can be chewed throughout the country and be an export product.”
The Yungas are a mountainous area, the gateway to the Amazon, it remains humid almost all year round, it has constant fog, abundant rainfall and is crossed by several rivers.
Law 286 declared January 11 of each year as National Chew Day to commemorate that in 2013 Bolivia once again adhered to the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961, with a reservation to allow chewing within national territory. .
In Sacaba, Cochabamba, the construction of a coca leaf industrialization plant is underway, where they foresee a varied production, from infusions to medicines.
Source: Ambito
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