Coca – Emerging gardens of evil
View(s):An article titled “Giving root to a deadly mix-up” by Shaveen Jeewandara (Sunday Times, May 5 about the cultivation of coca (cocaine- producing plant) in some home gardens in the Matara District, seemingly mistaken as sandalwood, deserves attention. This was also reported by a TV channel during the previous week.
Although the two plants (coca and sandalwood) appear similar to a layman, they can be easily distinguished from each other by checking how the leaves are arranged on the twig or the shoot. In coca, the leaves appear singly (alternate or spiral) on the twig, while in sandalwood they are borne in pairs (opposite). Coca is usually a 2 -3 m tall shrub, while sandalwood reaches the size of a small tree when mature.
Coca plant
Coca may refer to any of the four cultivated plants native in the eastern slopes of the Andes from northern Colombia, south to Bolivia and Argentine and in the western part of the Amazon Basin in South America. The plant is a cash crop in Bolivia and Peru and plays a role in many traditional Andean cultures
Cocaine (benzoylmethylecgonine) is a crystalline tropane alkaloid obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. It is usually known throughout the world for its psychoactive effects and is ranked both the second most addictive and the second most harmful of 20 popular recreational drugs.
The production of cocaine from coca requires complex chemical processes – chewing the leaves or drinking coca tea does not produce the “high” (euphoria, megalomania) people experience with cocaine. The original recipe of Coca Cola had cocaine in it, but now it is cocaine free.
There are two species of cultivated coca, each with two varieties:
Erythroxylum coca
Erythroxylum coca var. coca (Bolivian or Huánuco Coca) – well adapted to the eastern Andes of Peru and Bolivia, an area of humid, tropical, montane forest.
Erythroxylum coca var. ipadu (Amazonian Coca) – cultivated in the lowland Amazon Basin in Peru and Colombia.
Erythroxylum novogranatense
Erythroxylum novogranatense var. novogranatense (Colombian Coca) – cultivated in drier regions in Colombia.
Erythroxylum novogranatense var. truxillense (Trujillo Coca) – cultivated primarily in Peru and Colombia.
All four varieties were domesticated in pre-Columbian times in many South American countries. The plant introduced to Sri Lanka by the British, first in the Peradeniya Botanical Garden, is Erythroxylum novogranatense variety novogranatense, the Colombian Coca. It is generally a 2 -3 m tall shrub, but if allowed to grow in favourable conditions, can reach the size of a small slender tree reaching up to 5m or more in height.
Two varieties of Erythroxylum novogranatense are found only in cultivation in their original habitats. Evidence suggests that this species arose as a domesticated plant through human selection from Erythroxylon coca var. coca. Unlike the other three Coca varieties, Colombian coca is relatively more tolerant of diverse ecological conditions and also due to its pale yellowish green leaves, it was the variety introduced widely in horticulture in the past and distributed to many tropical countries, both as an ornamental and source of cocaine.
Rise and fall of coca / cocaine industryThe Germanic-Andean Connection
Europe was first introduced to coca, as one of the wonders of the “new world”, by the returning conquistadores (Spanish conquerors of Mexico and Peru in the 16th Century), yet only became popular in the 19th century, as interest in coca and its active properties increased. Interest in coca as a modern stimulant was awakened by the development of chemical (alkaloid) science in Germany. In 1859, Albert Niemann of the University of Göttingen became the first person to isolate the chief alkaloid of coca, which he named “cocaine”. Austrian medical-men, most famously Sigmund Freud, played a major early role researching and promoting cocaine’s medical uses world-wide. Koller in 1884, discovered cocaine’s local anaesthetic properties, a revolution in the progress of western surgery.
Colombian coca (Erythroxylum novogranatense) – in cultivation at the Peradeniya Botanical Gardens – note alternately arranged leaves and bright red fruits. Photos – courtesy of Dr. Siril Wijesundara, DG, National Botanical Gardens
Therefore, the first impulse to Andean coca/cocaine production came from “Germanic”-Europe (and to a lesser extent France and Britain) in the mid-19th century and by 1900 Germany was the lead scientific and producer interest in cocaine. These influences were felt deeply in Peru (the largest exporter) and how it organised the initial coca trades. However, the late 19th and early 20th century saw the explosion of coca cultivation outside of its traditional Andean context, cultivation focusing on cocaine production. It was a coca and cocaine boom, with colonial powers focusing on coca cultivation for intensive cocaine production.
The Dutch Colonial coca boom (1905-1930)
Dutch scientific-commercial interest in coca initiated with the advice of leading Dutch botanist J.K.Hasskarl, to introduce coca plants to Java (Indonesia) as early as 1854. This was not accepted at first by the Dutch government, but in the 1870s, the rise in the world demand spurred experimentation with coca plants and planting began in Java in the mid 1880s.
The speed of the Dutch rise to predominance in world coca and cocaine trades took the world by surprise, especially the Peruvians, who in 1900 still felt they enjoyed a natural (Incan) birthright to the global coca market. In the early twentieth century the Dutch Java became a leading exporter of coca leaf. By 1912 shipments to Amsterdam, where the leaves were processed into cocaine, reached 1 million kg, overtaking the Peruvian export market. Apart from the years of the First World War, Java remained a greater exporter of coca than Peru until the end of the 1920s. The Dutch built an especially productive and integrated industrial cocaine regime, yet it was also dismantled by decree almost as quickly as it arose.
Japanese Imperial Cocaine
The first Japanese involvements with coca and cocaine were responses to Western initiatives and go back to the 1890s, at the height of their cocaine age, and brought this expertise back to Japan. The cocaine processors began by purchasing Java and Peruvian coca (and crude cocaine). Then it began to grow coca in Formosa (Taiwan), an island Japan had obtained from China as a result of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895. Formosa had its peak coca production (179,000 kg) in 1930 and Japan acquired the “reputation” as the world’s biggest coca grower and cocaine producer. However, the production rapidly fell during the rest of the decade.
Entry of the British and other colonial powers
Although other European powers also tried coca production in their colonies, they produced no large contributions to the international traffic. The Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, which had worked similar strategies with Amazonian cinchona and rubber, procured commercial variety of coca in 1869. With the emerging coca boom, the Kew Gardens began a crash programme of coca research and the British conducted botanical experiments in India, Ceylon and Australia as did the Dutch, French and even Germans in Cameroon, but no other colonial source could match the quality and reliability of the Javanese supply of coca.
Global coca under pressure (1905-1910)
The major coca cultivation, cocaine production and exportation sites were, from the late 19th to the mid 20th century were Peru, Bolivia and Java and Formosa from the late 19th through the early 20th century. Up to the 2nd World War, coca was an important legal crop.
The British were alarmed at the far global reach of cocaine after two decades of expansion. The British Foreign Office (and official Imperial Institute) issued a detailed memorandum on cocaine (1909/10) that dealt with the “bodily effects” of this strange and harmful western drug (which they feared would swiftly replace their nineteenth-century opium scourge).
International prohibition of coca leaf
1910-50 represents cocaine’s declining middle age between the drug’s lawful peak and its global post-1950 prohibition (source and end-market). Several factors drove this steady fall: a narrowing of medical usage (anaesthesia) by substitutes, anti-cocaine laws and campaigns by states and international organizations (efforts most focused on narcotics), market withdrawal and diversification of vulnerable producers and coca planters.
The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 is an international treaty to prohibit production and supply of specific (nominally narcotic) drugs and of drugs with similar effects except under licence for specific purposes, such as medical treatment and research. As of May 2013, the convention has 184 UN state parties that include Sri Lanka. Article 36 of the Convention requires Parties to criminalise activities contrary to the provisions of the Convention. It also states that “The Parties shall so far as possible enforce the uprooting of all wild and illegally cultivated coca bushes” (Article 26). Coca plants and coca leaves are thus technically illegal in the countries which have ratified the convention and the laws make no distinction between the coca leaf and any other substance containing cocaine. Therefore, the cultivation, possession and sale of coca leaf are prohibited.
In South America (Bolivia, Peru, Chile and in some northern provinces in Argentina), the cultivation, sale, and possession of unprocessed coca leaf (but not of any processed form of cocaine) is generally legal. However, the coca leaf is illegal in Paraguay and Brazil. In an attempt to obtain international acceptance for the legal recognition of traditional use of coca in their respective countries, Peru and Bolivia led an unsuccessful crusade and finally Bolivia moved to denounce the 1961 Convention over the prohibition of the coca leaf. After 1950, Andean cocaine, outlawed by authorities everywhere, escaped all state regulation and carved out its own underground niches and chains, invoking a cast of now criminalized actors.
Coca plantations in Sri Lanka
The coca plant (Erythroxylum novogranatense variety novogranatense, the Colombian coca) was introduced to the Peradeniya Botanical Garden in 1870 (as pointed out by Dr. Siril Wijesundara, Director General of the National Botanical Gardens in the previous article) and the seeds came from the Royal Botanic Garden in Kew. It was then known as Erytroxylon coca and catalogued in the Peradeniya garden registers under that name. This is understandable as in the past, the plant was often confused with or considered a variety of Erythroxylon coca.
In Sri Lanka, coca cultivation at appreciable scale presumably started in the 1880s, especially in selected areas in the wet zone. It is evident that the crop was grown along with tea and as undergrowth in rubber, nevertheless not achieving plantation levels of any considerable extent. Only annual averages of 24,000 kg of leaves have been produced from 1906 to 1911 and the industry never became successful, although coca plants are still found in home gardens in this area. Whether the planting materials for coca plantations were supplied by the botanical garden or they were imported in relatively large amounts for this purpose, as well as whether all plantations originated from Colombian coca (Erythroxylum novogranatense variety novogranatense) needs further investigation.
Coca planting in Sri Lanka seems to have ceased in 1910 or a little while later. Although the cocaine problem had been initiated in India, such a problem had not been known in Ceylon and that indicates the possible secretive and guarded nature of coca plantations in Ceylon that no information on coca /cocaine was diffused to the general public in the country.
Recent appearance in home gardens
The article (Sunday Times, May 5, 2013) reports the occurrence of about 100 coca plants at one site near Akuressa and implies the possibility of finding several hundreds of plants or more in the Matara District. The distribution of coca seedlings as sandalwood among home garden owners by responsible government authorities, if true, is appalling. Some fingers have also been pointed at private nurseries. However, if the act of distribution of coca seedlings among home gardeners was due to sheer ignorance or manipulated by a sinister motive needs further investigation.
How did the authorities procure so many coca seeds / seedlings for distribution? The Peradeniya Botanical Garden cannot be a source as it does not sell coca seeds or seedlings and furthermore, the coca plants are grown in a strictly supervised area and pilferage is only a scant possibility. However, for an interested nursery owner or a horticulturist, the availability of coca seeds is not a considerable problem. The coca plant with its full shrubby nature that can be pruned and shaped and dressed with characteristically thin, and pale powdery green leaves and bright red fruits (drupe) will draw the attention of any gullible gardener. The steps said to have been taken by the Matara District officials to eradicate coca plants have to be closely monitored.
The claim of the Divisional Forest Officer of Matara that he has observed coca plants in Akuressa area in 2001 is interesting and indicates the possibility of its existence in some home gardens in the Matara District as ornamental plants, even prior to 2001. The bright red berries of coca can attract birds that disperse them from cultivated situation to abandoned plots of land. (The dispersal of bright red Bolivian coca (Erythroxylum coca variety. coca) fruits by birds in the Andean foot hills has been recorded). However, this has not been observed in or outside of the Peradeniya Botanical Gardens, possibly due to the restricted nature of its cultivation in the botanical garden. It is well known that several ornamental exotic plants that were introduced to botanical gardens have escaped and established as weeds, sometimes becoming invasive.
A recommendation
To prevent the future possibility of people getting addicted to a novel stimulant /drug and the emergence of a sinister industry, so far unknown in the country, it is suggested to develop a comprehensive action plan to arrest the spread of the plant and, as the first step, to develop sufficient legal provisions regarding the cultivation of coca plants in Sri Lanka.
(The writer is Senior Consultant, EML Consultants (Pvt) Ltd, Colombo and former Director, Plant Genetic Resources Centre, Department of Agriculture, Peradeniya)
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