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Show 177 a reliable author has said that in one year the profit of the gangster traffic in cocaine was $100,000,000; and yet the revenue expected from coca for 1950 was only 0.23% of the total national income. The average amount of cocaine in Peruvian coca is 0.6%. As 60 grms. is the usual amount chewed per day, the average of many analysis gives 267 mlgs. of cocaine as the amount swallowed per day: of this, 43% is recoverable as alkaloids from the urine in 48 hours, so the quantity of cocaine utilized in the body is a minimum of 114 mlgs. per day. The limits of safety are 3 to 30 mlgs. as a dose. Ever since we started the campaign against coca chewing in 1929, there has been a continuous polemic about the effects of this habit. I give a synthesis of the arguments advanced for and against the mastication of coca. The Commission of the UNO has issued its report condemning the practice and declaring all the arguments commonly used in favor of coca chewing as valueless. The report declares that this habit is harmful to the individual and to society, because 1) It maintains a constant state of malnutrition; 2) It induces undesirable changes of intellectual and moral character; 3) It reduces the economic yield of productive work. The report further says that coca chewing could and should be abolished in 5 to 15 years. What has happened in Ecuador is a good object-lesson. There chewing was also general, but a decree in 1574 forbad the sale of coca, except in mining centers, and as there were no mines in Ecuador, coca became difficult to obtain and the people forgot the habit. As a consequence Ecuadorian Indians are today much superior physically and mentally to those of Peru and Bolivia. The author puts forward the suggestion of nationalizing the coca industry, as the best means of controlling it and of changing the production of the 15,000 acres of coca shrubs to fruit and vegetables, which are badly needed by the Indians of the highlands. All well wishers of the Indians of Peru, have been painfully surprised and disappointed, with the astonishing attitude of the UNO as regards coca-chewing in this country. They seem to have allowed themselves to be too easily led into letting down their own commission who had issued a most impartial and conscientious report, declaring that coca-chewing was harmful to the individual and to the Nation and that, therefore, it should be curtailed first and abolished eventually. Now the UNO simply postpones its decision for 15 years, presumably to meditate on the matter. As we already |
