Bolivia Puts Coca Back into "Coca-Colla"

Coca-Cola used to contain coca, a plant that can be refined into cocaine. Bolivians are now putting it back into cola and calling it "Coca-Colla":
The drink, made from the coca leaf and named after the indigenous Colla people from Bolivia's highlands, went on sale this week across the South American country.

It is black, sweet and comes in a bottle with a red label – but similarities to Coca-Cola end there. One is a symbol of US-led globalisation and corporate might; the other could be considered a socialist-tinged affront to western imperialism. [...]

It is made from the coca leaf, a mild stimulant that wards off fatigue and hunger, and has been used in the Andes for thousands of years in cooking, medicine and religious rites. [...]

Bolivia tried to wipe out the leaf at Washington's behest. But that was before Evo Morales, an Aymara Indian and coca grower, was elected president, championing coca as a crop with legitimate uses.


Link via Fast Company | Photo: Dado Galdieri/AP

I second that "good for them", the US imposed its failing drug war on other countries for far too long. They have every right to make use of and profit from a product that grows naturally in their country. Coca has been used by the indigenous people there for centuries, only in the last century has it's use been perverted by 1st world science and greed.
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Dosn't Coke still have de-cocainized coca plant?
I thought that was like their "super-de-duper secret that will ruin us, so lets try to keep it hush hush" secret.
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Coca in it's unrefined form is perfectly legal there, and used as a mild stimulant. Cocaine only became a problem when some genius decided that distilling the stuff to 100% purity and snorting the equivalent of several years' supply of the stuff in a disco would be a good idea.

If you freebased raw, concentrated caffeine, the effects would be the same.
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