washington d.c. virginia, maryland, the colonial economy was tobacco. these were all drugs and the first time a lot of these drugs were introduced back to europe people looked at them with revulsion. tobacco is a bizarre thing. why would you put fire and smoke into your mouth? .. >> and now we have, you know, turkish coffee, we have english tea time, and, of course, the tobacco fortunes that drove u.s. and european development. and so long story short, the reason half the world got

colonized in some ways is because of a bunch of old white end men in europe couldn't get it up. [laughter] so there you have sex, drugs and international relations in a nutshell. [laughter] but i tell the story because what we consider drugs is important. and so when the mostly white males of european ancestry who drafted this 1961 international convention got to exempt all of their favorite drugs, the ones they were partial to and got accustomed to; coffee, alcohol, tea, you know, all these things that they loved to do. but coca was manager that indigenous -- was something that indigenous people used, indians. and it was those racist attitudes that made them say, you know, this is forbidden. this is terrible stuff. but, in fact, coca in its natural form is, actually, i think, a very beneficial plant and relatively harmless. it's a very, very, very mild

stimulant, if my opinion. in my opinion. from personal experience i compare it to two cups of coffee, basically. and so the thing that's hard to get across to people in the united states or these policymakers is that coca is not cocaine. all right? it's -- and indigenous peoples of this hemisphere should not be punished because some people refine it into can cocaine and abuse it. coca, there's great dignity and value to this lease, and there's an ancient tradition that doesn't harm people, and the arrogance by which the united states foreign policy tries to dictate terms to places like bolivia, less than 1% of excess cocaine in bolivia with ends up in the united states. and yet the heavyhanded nature of u.s. policy, you would think this was some kind of flood coming from bolivia the way we dictate terms to that country. and so, now, imagine if the united nations and the audience of the u.n. convention were to

treat coffee the way, with the contempt they treat coca, right? what would happen if they -- and they've told bolivians and peruvians you have to stop chewing coca which they've been doing for centuries, if not thousands of years. imagine if they did that to the united states, you know, coffee, you have to give up this habit now. what would happen? well, a friend of mine actually did this. he was a performance art major, andrew. he went to amherst college, and in 2001 he conspire with the the school administration and student government to secretly ban coffee or for one day without notice during finals week as a performance art project. so all these students get up in the morning, and there's no coffee in the cafeteria, bookstore, no coffee on campus. and they have friends dress up as drug dealers. buddy, you want to buy a shot of espresso for $6? and people were actually buying

this. it made "the new york times," cbs news, all this kind of stuff. so that is the kind of outrage you would naturally expect if people told you you could no longer consume your favorite beverage, your favorite stimulant, coffee. and you begin to understand some of the outrage from people in the andes when the ignorant people, other people decide they can't chew coca anymore. and then finally just a, i would just say that, you know, this treaty, 1961 treaty, it's 52 years old now. and the u.s. and a number of, a small number of other governments say that we should not revisit these treaties, it's as though they were carved in stone. so much has changed since 1961. would any of these governments defend the views on gender equality, on sexual orientation, on indigenous rights, on race relations based on 52-year-old attitudes? of course not. we've evolved. our views have changed.

we've become better. and the same people, the drug warriors who want to protect their turf are saying, no, we must never revisit these conventions. these things should be set in stone for all time. and, of course, that time has come to change these things. so, um, to talk more about these conventions, i'm going to turn this over to coletta. >> thank you. is this on? yeah. so i would like to just offer a few more reflections on the coca leaf and then talk primarily about what's going on with regards to reform the international drug control conventions, and then i'll conclude with some thoughts on the growing movement for drug policy reform. what i really like about ricardo's book apart from the illustrations, which are great, is how he reveals the hypocrisies of the so-called war on drugs, u.s. war on drugs. and one of those, as sanho's pointed out, is how coffee is treated differently than coca. and i would even go a little bit further than sanho in saying my

own experience is coca is a mild stimulant, but it doesn't have the edge that coffee does. so you can drink two cups of coca and go to sleep without any trouble later on that night. if i drink two cups of cough tee in the -- coffee in the afternoon, i'm up half the night. it doesn't give you that two hours after you drink the coffee, you kind of crash. coca is a mild, very nice stimulant, and it has a variety of nutritional values. so apart from the fact that it's been used by indigenous people for religious, culture and nutritional reasons and medicinal reasons for centuries now, there's an effort to create a variety of legal coca products taking advantage of the advantages that it offers not only in bolivia, but also in peru and colombia. so it's not long ago i was in bolivia, and i had the opportunity to visit a coca processing plant which sanho has also been to that the government has built in the coca-growing region of bolivia and had the

opportunity to sample some of their products. they have a marvelous coca liqueur which i really like. they have a variety of energy drinks. there's an energy drink in colombia that a group produces called cocaset which has a great flavor to it but but, again, its not like drinking red bull. it would be much better for you. there's all kinds of ointments, there's a variety of breads and rolls made from coca flour. there's also these, um, this is the bag from what they call chasitos which are basically cheese puffs that the government is distributing to kids through a free breakfast program. the folks at the plant went on about how great these are. i thought they were awful myself, but i guess the kids like them. i also confess that i really hate coca toothpaste. but my point is that there are a variety of products that have very lis sit and good uses and

should be available not only in these countries, but also on the international market. there are a variety of uses beyond what coca-cola uses for flavoring. another hypocrisy of the convention -- another hypocrisy that ricardo points to in his book is related to the conventions. i was really struck reading your book, i had not realized this cozy relationship between the u.s. drug czar and the president of coca-cola. >> right. >> vice president of coca-cola. very cozy relationship. so in the end the 1961, um, u.n. single convention on narcotic drugs and the subsequent 1988 convention make coca growing a criminal offense under international law. so while coca-cola was guaranteed the right to use coca as a flavoring in their own product, indigenous peoples across the andes were told that the traditional practice of coca leaf chewing and drinking coca

tea would no longer be tolerated by the international community. and the u.s. was the architect of these treaties, um, certainly had support from other countries. today they have key allies in their effort to maintain the treaties such as russia, japan, sweden. but it really is a u.s. instrument. so coca, along with cannabis and opium, became the main targets of the 1961 convention. this historical error, as i like to call it, was basically justified by the 1950 report of the commission of inquiry on the coca leaf which, as sanho pointed out, is a totally racist document. it's totally, totally racist, has absolutely no scientific evidence. you'll be outraged as you read it, yet it is still the basis for the international drug control convention's treatment of coca. subsequent to that in the 1990s, the u.n. world health organization, the who, carried

out a -- the who, excuse me, carried out a study -- [laughter] carried out a study of coca and cocaine, and they concluded the use of coca leaves has positive therapeutic, sacred and social functions for indigenous andean populations. and there are a variety of other studies including one done bihar saturday that point to the nutritional value of the coca leaf. but in response to the who study not surprisingly the u.s. government led the charge against it, it died in peer review and was never published, although you can find it on the internet. the '61 convention calls for the elimination of coca chewing within 25 years of that going into force of the convention, and that period ran out in 1989. in the meantime, the international community adopted the universal declaration on the rights of age ding now -- indigenous people which calls for the respect of medicinal

practices of indigenous populations. for many countries, including the united states, they have basically accepted the idea of the indigenous use of coca leaves. for years you could get coca tea in the u.s. embassy in la paz in order to help deal with altitude sickness. they only took it away after sanho and others started pointing out that it was readily available at the embassy. yet despite these changes, the u.s. government and other governments, um, have refused to allow any changes to the international conventions and any changes that would correct this historical wrong. turning now to efforts to change it, the election of morales as president of bolivia who is a coca grower himself marks a real turning point for relations with the international community and in terms of the government's policy towards the coca leaf. they basically, the morales

administration adopted a coca yes, cocaine no approach. they eliminated the forced eradication strategies that had led to so many human rights violations, violet social conflict and replaced that with a program of voluntary social control which has actually had better results than the previous policies and certainly better results than, say, neighboring peru. in 2011 there was a 13% decrease in netco ca production in that country, according to the u.s. government. but with regards to the international conventions, the government began a campaign to try and right this, correct this historical error. and the first thing they did which everyone agreed was sort of a modest effort at change was to try and amend the '61 convention by removing the two subparagraphs that basically seiko ca leaf chewing needs to be abolished during the 25-year

period. they simply wanted to delete those two paragraphs. without any objections, bolivia's request would have been automatically accepted. but not surprisingly, the u.s. led the charge to oppose that amendment to the convention, rallying what they called a friends of the convention group of governments, um, 18 in all which objected and, hence, thwarted bolivia's effort. so in ponce to that -- in response to that, a year ago the bolivian government decided to withdraw from the 1961 convention and readhere with the reservation regarding the traditional and legal uses of the coca leaf. and the way that process works is that, um, one-third of member countries would need to formally object to prevent bolivia's readherence to the convention, um, a year later. and, in fact, tomorrow is the deadline for countries to oppose bolivia coming back into the international convention.

as of mid afternoon today, um, i know of 13 countries that have objected. of course, the u.s. was the first to object. i'm sure there will be a few more in the next 24 hours. but at this point it's, obviously, not likely, highly improbable that you would get the 62 that you would need to prevent bolivia's return. so on the one hand, this is a victory for bolivia. they will be able to return to the international drug control community with their reservation on the coca leaf. but it'll only effect bolivia. it doesn't effect the convention. so internationally, this historical wrong has yet to be corrected. the u.s. government, as i said, was the first to object. um, they basically said they were objecting because allowing this change would lead to a greater supply of available coca and, hence, would lead to more cocaine and more drug trafficking. that argument is absurd at so many levels that i'm not even going to go into it.

their fear is that this is going to be the beginning of more serious changes to the conventions and that other countries are going to follow suit. in other words, any change to this outdated document, these outdated documents will, um, will open a pandora's box of attempted reforms. and i think, frankly, that they have reason to be concerned, and i'll just conclude with this. um, they're afraid that marijuana's going to be next. and why not? uruguay has proposed creating regulated markets for cannabis in that country. that is very likely to pass in the next six months within uruguay, it'll be the first country in the world to have legal cannabis markets if it does. we just legalized marijuana in colorado and washington. we were at a or forum yesterday that was cosponsored with brookings on that, and one of the panelists said, well, the u.s. should just withdraw from the convention and readhere like bolivia did. obviously, not likely to happen, but the u.s. is now at odds with

the very international conventions that it created. and there is more and more impetus for reform coming particularly from latin america which has borne the cost of the u.s. war on drugs. increasingly, officials are saying why are we implementing these policies that have made things much worse in our countries in order for u.s. consumers to have less drugs available to them? that just doesn't make sense. so for the first time you have sitting presidents as opposed to ex-presidents like santos in colombia -- [inaudible] in guatemala who are calling for a serious debate on drug policy reform. there have been a series of initiatives that we can go into detail on in the discussion period that are coming from the region. but most significantly at the request of mexico, colombia and guatemala ecosock, the u.n.'s ecosock has just approved the

holding of a u.n. special session, u.n. general assembly special session on drugs which will take place a few years from now, 2016, but will provide the next really serious opportunity for convention reform. who knows what will happen. it's too far out. but there is clearly a move for change in the region, and that's why the u.s. government is so nervous. thank you. >> um, i actually want to tell one more story. as you were telling -- talking, you reminded me of. so as we're saying, the coca-cola company was allied with harry -- [inaudible] to codify this special access to the coca leaf. the coca-cola company got that access in the 1961 single convention. so after that happened the coca-cola company, they have legal access to coca now. but it was always, i think, a little politically problematic for them to be, to insure that they would always have access to

coca. there are changing governments in latin america, they never really know if they're going to have an in. so they wanted to try to grow coca in the united states so they could have better access to it and also, i think the quote was they want to have greater agricultural knowledge of the plant basically to be able to tipger with levels of cocaine, to tinker with the different flavors. so they asked the federal government actually at this point right after the convention, anslinger retired as commissioner. he moved on to represent the u.s. at the u.n., and we had a new commissioner, gee your can know. and the coca-cola company asked him, okay, we wanted to grow coca in the united states now, can we work something out here? so as long allies for the coca-cola company, they said, yeah, sure, what do you want? the u.s. virgin islands? how about hawaii? yeah, hawaii sounds great. so they went to the university of hawaii and contacted with president of the university of

hawaii, said we want to start this pilot program to grow coca leaf on u.s. soil. we've worked out all the legalities even though it's technically not legal, this is a matter of, you know, scientific research. the president of the university of hawaii said, well, that's great, but, you know, we can't keep it secret, we can't take the coca-cola name off the project. we're, you know, a public university, and so, um, unless it was a matter of national security or something. and so the federal bureau of narcotics was, yeah, it's a matter of national security. [laughter] so they're like, oh, okay, sure. it's a secret now. so, basically, this project went on. it started in 1964, and it went on until 1984. they were growing coca at the university of hawaii. the funny part about this and why i bring this up is what ended up happening was the coca didn't actually grow very well. in fact, most of it died. so in 1984 they abandoned the

project, and the u.s. department of agriculture took over the project because they wanted to find out why this coca was dying. and they eventually figured out there was a fungus that was taking over the coca and was killing this coca. and so the dea took over this project because they wanted to develop this fungus as a way to eradicate coca. that one little story is really a marvel because it encapsulates the whole relationship that's going on here. we have this leaf that indigenous people are denied access to that we've heard has lots of nutritional, social, medicinal, religious, cultural value to people, and they're denied access to this leaf, but you have multi-national corporations that are granted special privileged access so that they can use the same leaf to make billions and billions of dollars. and that's what they did. and then they start this experiment so that they can make more. and it doesn't go so well for them. so the u.s. government takes it over and transforms that same

project into a way to eradicate coca back in the amazon. and so the last i heard was, i think it was president clinton who, um, who said the dea was asking to release this fungus into the rain forest. president clinton said no at the time. the last i heard in 2007 was that they're still looking into ways of using this fungus as an eradication method. it sounds kind of iffy to me, releasing a fungus into a rain forest. but, yeah, i think that's kind of an interesting way of seeing how these privileges are afforded to some powerful, you know, factors and not to others. i just wanted to throw that in. >> i would just add real quick, well, first, on the fungus thing. one of the great experts in this town, jeremy, who is sitting in the office who's done a lot of research on in this issue -- perhaps we can talk later, jeremy -- but on the question of the u.s. embassy. the u.s. embassy's own web site

used to have, used to recommend to travelers landing in la paz to have coca tea. it's a that-brainer -- no-brainer. it's about 13,000 feet high, right? and the airport which is a plateau above the city is even higher. so your oxygen content at that altitude is about 40% of what you would have at sea level. so you suffer terrible altitude sickness, extreme fatigue, headache, you just don't want to do anything for two days unless you consume coca products whether it's chewing coca or coca tea. and that will allow you to acclimate to that altitudement and so it's, it's not what you feel when you chew the coca, it's what you don't feel. you don't feel high, but you don't feel the altitude, and you don't get those headaches. and so it's a very benign product. but one more point about the perceptions of coca. when the spaniards first started

heading south and they started getting to the andes, they ran across these indigenous peoples who had the custom of chewing coca. and the church thought, oh, this must be the work of the devil. it's in their mouths, it's leaves, it's green and slimy. they banned it, all right? until they ran into the biggest silver deposit in the history of the world. a mountain in bolivia, 14,000 feet high. and there was no way they were going to be able to force indigenous people to mine at that altitude without coca. and so suddenly the church did a 180 and instead of being this banned, sinful thing, it became mandatory and taxed. and so perceptions about things change. >> i'll just add one more comment in response p to ricardo's statement which is that we are poisoning the rain forest because we are engaged in aerial spraying as most of you know, i'm sure, in colombia

which has a whole range of negative impacts on that country and on the amazon. and just to end with an anecdote, the u.s -- a former u.s. ambassador to peru who was ambassador in the late '80s told me a story once. they were trying to convince the peruvians who had refused -- both bolivia and peru have refused to allow aerial spraying programs in the country. they were trying to convince peru, so they brought a delegation i think it was to georgia to show them how they would do the spraying. and they started the little presentation, and then out walked these men in white astronaut suits covered from head to toe with the sample of the spraying and the peruvians just ran and said, no way, we're not going to do that. [laughter] so we'll end on that. >> and so now we will, by a show of hands, i will bring the microphone around so then everyone can hear your question, um, and then we will start our

discussion. so anyone want to kick us off with a question? a comment for the panel? is something you want to share, it doesn't matter. okay. i'll start here at the man in the back, and then i'll come up here. >> i was just wondering as a follow up, did they ever have a widespread eradication of coca leaves because of the '61 ban? >> widespread but not effective. finish so in colombia where they do the aerial spraying, the fumigation, we've destroyed millions of acre ors of coca and rain forest and environment. this is one of the most biodiverse countries in the world. we're literally scorching the lungs of the earth. but colombia is bigger than texas and california combined. the same is true of bolivia, the same is true of peru. these are very large land masses, and trying to eradicate coca is like trying to have a war on canned lions in the united states. you know, good luck, it's not

possible. nonetheless,ing our drug warriors did this in colombia. so after 12 years of merciless onslaught of eradication, 12 years ago 90% of cocaine in the united states originated from colombia. after a dozen years of intense drug war in colombia, today about 95% of u.s. cocaine originates from colombia. whereas less than 1% originates from bolivia. and the bolivians actually have done much better in terms of eradication of excess coca and interdiction of cocaine, some of its transiting through peru to brazil and argentina, other countries. but also their own illicit cocaine, they've captured and ask seized more of that than previous governments that were very subserve crept to u.s. governments. so the bolivians have done better than previous governments, and yet our state department still, you know, denigrates their efforts at least in mix. at least in public. but then eradication in bolivia,

there's been manual forced eradication, and in peru as well, which is very, very violent and difficult to stomach. i used to think that manual eradication might be kind of a kinder, gentler way to do it rather than using these toxic herbicides that we spray over colombia until i ran into an eradication team in colombia and watched them do this where the national police literally hold the family members at gunpoint at their little shack while a team of 40 men come in and within a half hour destroy your livelihood and uproot all your coca trees. bushes. and what happens is that you force then these people into food insecurity, right? these are sort of peasant farmers. and bolivia, for the longest time, was the poorest country in south america. there's tremendous poverty. when you destroy their only source of food security, right, they panic. how am i going to feed my family next week, next month, next year? what is the one crop they know how to grow that's relatively

easy to transimportant inlike other -- transport for which there are ready and willing buyers? and that, of course, was coca. that guarantees they're going to replant more coca. so this constant cycle of eradication, replanting and conflict was finally broken by the morales administration that granted the right to grow a personal amount of coca, about 40 meters by 40 meters. that's enough to guarantee a modest income for a family. you won't get rich doing this, but you can save a little bit of money, you can send your kids to school and very basic things, but you can save a little money. and then you can start to diversify the economies. and i've seen these villages in the region that under u.s. policy was constant conflict, insecurity, more of the same, you know, it was like shoveling -- [inaudible] completely ineffective. now i go back to some of these same towns, and they're flourishing. the economies are diversifying

because these farmers now have some food security, some predictability. they're able then to invest a little bit of money. if they have experience cooking, they'll build a little restaurant, hotel or car repair shop, and that's how you wean these economies off coca eventually, right? it's counterintuitive, but it's like the recession here in the united states. as long as people are insecure and don't know what tomorrow's going to bring, they're going to hunker down, they're not going to take risks, they're not going to invest, and they're not going to diversify the economy. >> yeah. i'd just like to congratulate our three speakers. i'm one who considers myself somebody who follows this issue very closely, and i had some interesting insights tonight that i learned learned and conge you for your provocative and effective presentation. i want to make two points in addition to that, and that is, um, in bolivia -- you mentioned the embassy, i suppose advising americans they should consume

americans to adjust to the altitudes and so on. i was saying there are other nonindigenous sectors in bolivia like student groups or truck drivers or taxi drivers who are big consumers of coca for very functional reasons. university students like to chew coca more than a couple cups of coffee to stay up all night to study for exams. truck drivers stay awake on the roads, diminish traffic fatalities and so forth, so you have a lot of nice contributions from these middle class sectors as well. it's through pursuing this peril with marijuana could be very productive for your interests in working on changing attitudes, perceptions, working toward policy changes since marijuana there's so much movement on that right now. americans are thinking about it. the more you can draw parallels to the coca situation to the marijuana, it seems to me, is going to be very productive and very enlightening to people and help them think about it in different ways. i wanted to ask very

specifically in the 1961 convention did it call for, also, the 25-year elimination of consumption of marijuana, and what would the -- how is it that defined those goals? was it similar to coca, or was that some other nuance? thank you. >> thanks, kevin. i would just like to point out that the bolivian government is delighted that the u.s. is now out of line with the conventions as they are as well. um, with regards to the '61 convention, it was just coca. it doesn't call for the elimination -- it, of course, makes illegal the growing and consumption of, actually, the '88 convention that makes growing illegal. but the growing and consumption -- growing and production, not consumption, excuse me, of marijuana, coca and, um, poppy. poppy has got -- there are a variety of exceptions for poppy. um, and just to be clear on this, i'm not explaining it

clearly, the conventions make production and trafficking illegal. there is nothing in the conventions that makes consumption illegal. um, so, for example, the dutch coffee shops where you were able to consume marijuana, that technically does not fall outside of the conventions. what falls outside of the conventions is the people who sell the marijuana to the dutch coffee shops. but as i said, it was this, a special commission on the inquiry of the coca leaf that led to such dramatic action with regards to coca. >> yeah. i think marijuana is a very good illustration of how things change generationally. i do believe marijuana is a gateway drug. it's a gateway to becoming president. every president we've had since 1993 has abused our drug laws in very serious ways, some of them possibly even crossing into mandatory minimum territory. but that also speaks to the

entire generation of our lawmakers, right? so newt gingrich, susan molinari, you know, rick santorum, a lot of these -- al gore, they've all consumed marijuana. they've all admitted doing this. in fact, it's harder now to find people who came off age in the '60s and '70s who didn't experiment with marijuana or didn't use recreationally. you'll recall the democratic primary, i think it was 2008 or 2004, where they had the democratic wannabes on the stage. i think it was anderson cooper asked them, okay, raise your hand if you didn't use marijuana, and joe lieberman had to sheepishly raise his hand. [laughter] so the question then becomes, well, what is the basic legitimacy of these laws? the hypocrisy under which these are written and voted on, right? the same people who violated these laws are now voting on these laws, and the question has to be asked would a prison sentence have been good for your life and your career, and if not, why is it so good for all these other people?

particularly poor people and people of color and people in other parts of the world. so it's coming full circle now. we can't avoid this question much longer. >> thank you. enjoying the presentation. i have a question about where the pharmaceutical industry is in all of this, um, and if they also like the coca-cola, um, relationship with the drug czar. because i'm assuming that there's a lot of pharmaceutical products that rely on the coca and the codeine and all these other products. i don't know, like, where does that -- where do they get their supplies, and are they setting themselves up very nicely while also there's more of these draconian policies in place on people? >> uh-huh. well, i can speak -- i can't speak on the pharmaceutical companies at large. you might be able to chime in on that. i do know that the process that the coca-cola company outsources to the step-in company in new jersey, basically, to get the flavor extract that they use for

coca-cola you take the coca leaf, they import tons of coca leaf. they've imported hundreds of tons of coca leaf over the last century, and then they, there's a process to extract the alkaloid, to extract the cocaine. so what comes out of that process is a really fine grade of cocaine, probably the best cocaine you'll find in the united states of america is manufactured by this company at the behest, basically, of coca-cola. and the last, um, the last verifiable quote that i could get was that they were selling it to the pharmaceutical industry to a company. i'm o not sure if that is still where it goes, but cocaine has been historically used as a local anesthetic, a topical anesthetic, and there's still some use for it in the medal industry -- medical industry although for the most part it's been replaced by synthetics like novocain. but there's still some medical

use for it. >> [inaudible] from one country only but -- [inaudible] >> where the coca comes from? the coca comes from peru. >> [inaudible] >> yeah. i'm not sure if they ever got coca from bolivia. i heard that morales talked about that that was happening. i've never seen evidence of it, but i've heard that it did come from bolivia as well. but peru is primarily where the coca comes from. now, where it goes to after that, it goes to new jersey. i'm also curious, and i haven't been able to discern this yet, and it's actually a follow-up investigation as to are there other countries where coca-cola has been able to do this. in my reporting in the national archives i was following a thread where they were trying to do the same thing in the u.k. and just a couple years ago trace elements of cocaine were discover inside red bull cola in germany which leads one to

believe, yes, this has been going on in other countries. it's not only the coca-cola company in the u.s. that has access to these coca extracts. but red bull got hold of it and didn't do such a good job taking the cocaine out. >> i would just add that, n., the international drug control conventions were set up to allow access and monitor access to controlled medicines. so i don't know a hot about this. there are people who follow it very closely, but, yes, the international narcotics control board is specifically tasked with overseeing the export and importation of, um, what are otherwise illicit drugs, um, in order to insure that people have access to pape killers, basically -- painkillers, basically. and it's primarily poply-related -- poply-related, but also there is a small market of controlled cocaine production very heavily monitored by the

incb for that purpose. >> we have a question here. >> yes. i'd like to get, circle around back to the not avoiding the question, and that question is what to we do politically. and i have a small opportunity here for people if they're interested. there is a special election coming up. there's one candidate running on the green party platform which says stop the war on drugs and normalize recreational drugs. now, i do have some petitions here that you can sign later. >> [inaudible] >> so the question is, you know, what do we do. from a policy perspective, if you don't -- how many people have communicated with their elected officials to express their views on any subject? good, good. very civic-minded group. a lot of people in this country, however, don't, and they think, oh, nothing i can do to do this.

when i was in high school, i had a good civics teacher, but i was taught these are the three branches of government, and your job to show up every four years and if you're upset about something, write a letter. but, in fact, there's a whole tool box of things we can do at the local level. there's a tremendous amount of heffage you have if you know how to build effective coalitions, how to communicate effectively. history is made by those who show up, so if you sit on your couch and just complain, that pretty much guarantees things won't change. on the other hand, if you start learning how to do these things, how to write an effective letter or build a coalition, then you become the squeaky wheel. because elected officials, members of congress don't have the opportunity to take polls of their district every time there's an issue to be voted on. it's too cumbersome and expensive. they want to know what are the letters we've been getting? what kind of op eds and columns

are they writing? how many faxes, how many phone calls, how many people came to visit? and so they extrap rate by that. and there are very few people on the other side these days pushing for more drug lore. so this gives us an advantage in terms of representing ourselves, but that means you have to get involved. and if you don't, then it's a lost opportunity. >> yeah. and i just want to add a little story. in the research of this book, i reached out to the coca-cola company several times. at first under the auspices of writing an article about the flavor profile of coca-cola, and i was talking to the director of worldwide communications about i drink coca-cola myself, talking about, you know, how much i love the flavor and this and that. we're getting into all that. and then when the question of cocaine, the rumors of cocaine come up, they just shut down. there's a stock line. he actually told me it was a stock line. he said this is what i say every time someone asks about that which is that the secret formula is one of our most valuable's

sets and, therefore, we can't talk about it. so they get to hide behind this veil of secrecy by claiming, you know, that it's part of their plan. that's their plan. and, in fact, it is their plan. you go down to the coca-cola, you know, museum down in georgia and the secret formula's behind a big, um, bank vault, you know? it's part of, like, the allure of coca-cola, that it's a secret. another time i reached out to coca-cola. they have a twitter account that is doc pemberton. it's, dr. john pemberton is the pharmacist who invented coca-cola. so now they have the twitter page for him. he speaks in old-timey language and talks about riding on horses. so i sent him a drawing that i had dope when i was a child. -- done when i was a child. when i was 8 years old, i was still into coca-cola. i sent him a picture, and he said, oh, that's great. i wonder what you can do now? so i sent him another picture of

a pemberton wipe coca-cola bottle. there was actually alcohol in it. alcohol was prohibited before cocaine was in georgia at the time, so they had to take the alcohol out. that's when they added the caffeine to give you an extra kick, and the that was the west african cola nut. hence, the coca and the cola. so i sent him that picture, and he's like, oh, that's great too. i love it. don't show the polar bears, they might go after you. basically, i was trying to reel him in because, actually, i have another question about the single convention on narcotic drugs -- [laughter] and how do you feel about how the coca-cola has access to coca and yet the indigenous people aren't allowed to have it, etc., etc. i was doing this all in a twitter feed that at that point he denies answer. [laughter] and -- he didn't answer. and it's funny, his avatar was actually, like, shh, like a secret, you know? so i did that just so i could

illustrate the entire dialogue afterward as a ways of just, you know, interfacing with these companies. and i actually planned to continue to keep knocking on their door asking about this. yeah. >> we have a question here. >> [inaudible] >> okay. all right. question here, and i know the woman over there as well. >> hi. thank you so much. this has been really fascinating. um, i was wondering if you guys could tell us if you could set your ideal policy for the war on cocaine specifically and, like, illegality of cocaine in the u.s. right now, like, what would that policy be and how does that fit in with all of this that you've talked about? thank you. >> well, i think you'd get a lot of different responses to that within the drug policy reform movement. and i want to underscore that there is a drug policy reform movement here in this country and also in latin america, and

particularly in latin america that wasn't the case a few years ago. with regards to coca, i think it's a no-brainer. there is absolutely no reason coca should be prohibited in international law. there's absolutely no reason that countries like bolivia, peru and colombia should not be allowed to market coca products internationally. there's no reason that coca-cola should not be allowed to use their coca flavoring and, of course other countries should be allowed to do the same. the amount of cocaine alkaloids in the coca leaf is minuscule, it's tiny. it's very small, so it does not pose any kind of danger when used in its natural form. i do think that there is an issue with, um, you know, the people who grow coca are some of the poorest people in latin america. these are poor farm ors with small plots -- farmers with small plots of land, and i think we have an obligation to help those countries bring those people out of poverty, and that

means comprehensive, equitable, rural economic development programs in areas like the bolivian chaparre along the lines of what sanho was saying earlier. with regards to cocaine, um, i think you -- that's where it gets trickier. there certainly are people who would advocate for complete legalization of drugs, um, across the board. my own personal opinion is that, one, drug use should not be illegal. we should not be putting cocaine users or users of any other drugs in jail. two, i think we need to experiment with marijuana legalization so that we given -- we begin to have some body of sign terrific evidence to see what happens when you legalize first a drug that is much less dangerous and what we can learn from looking at more dangerous drugs such as cocaine and for addictive drugs such as cocaine. and i also think we need to fundamentally revamp our drug laws.

this is an issue i work a lot on in latin america. we have created a system where we put in jail primarily small scale drug dealers, the guys -- the girls and boys selling the drugs on the street corner or running drugs back and forth or the people in the andean countries who are transporting drugs. these people aren't making a lot of money off of it, and the day you arrest them, they are replaced by the drug trafficking organizations. yet they go to jail, and in this country and in particularly in latin america which has adopted across-the-board in many countries harsh u.s. drug laws, they can end up with 20 years in jail. just one example, ecuador which really has, you know, is a minor player in international drug trafficking networks. the maximum sentence for murder in that country is 16 years. the sentence for drug trafficking is a minimum of 12, maximum of 25 years, and it doesn't distinguish between your level of involvement in the drug

trade. so you go to jails in ecuador, and you find people who were selling drugs on the street corner who had a judge that was in a particularly bad mood that day or was worried about getting his u.s. visa renewed and gave him a sentence of 20 years, and he ends up in jail for longer than somebody who has committed murder. it's just ridiculous. so we need to do a major reform of our drug laws to insure that sentences are proportionate to the crime committed. i know you probably want to -- >> yeah. i would just ad that, you know, the way we talk about this is difficult in the united states. americans, we're a very simple-minded people. we like simple answers, unfortunately. black or white, who are the good guys, which team do i root for? menu a or men you b? but, in fact, there's a spectrum of possibilities. it's the poverty of our political discourse that prevents us from having a meaningful discussion about in this issue so that, for instance, the inuits, the

eskimos used to be called, have some two dozen words to describe snow. snow's important to them. it's life or death, and increasingly it's disappearing. but that was the richness of their vocabulary. and yet we hold democracy to be so valuable in this country, so much so we're going to invade other countries and impose it, but we only have two words to describe democracy in the country, right? democrat or republican. and if you dare vote green party or libertarian or whatever, you're viewed as some kind of a fringe freak or something like that. and it robs us of choices. and so we are not allowed to consider the spectrum of regulatory possibilities even in human politics, for instance. in the history of the human experience, we've had everything from totalitarian fascism on one end to anarchism on the other end and everything in between. every human society has found different ways to organize its cultures, its economy, its politics, and yet we're not allowed to consider any of those human experiences other than these very two close points on

the spectrum be, democrat or republican, that are increasingly so close together kate moss couldn't squeeze between them. [laughter] and that carries over into the way we talk about drugs. either yes or no, legal or illegal. but, in fact, legalization is a word that i think has become radioactivity. drug warriors have had many decades to spin that term and define it the way they want it defined which is anarchy, right? when i debated in the past, they hold up a very simple false dichotomy. either you support zero tolerance and their policy in the drug war, or you're accused of wanting to sell heroin in candy machines to children. but, in fact, there's a whole spectrum of regular ha story possibilities -- regulatory possibilities for different drugs. we have a one size fits all, it's all illegal. but, you know, and so we're going to have to experiment and find out which policies work best for each particular drug. stimulants are a bit more problematic, but we need to find out to what extent our war on cocaine originally in the '80s

helped poplarrize and spread a poor person's version of cocaine, crack. and to what extent did our war on crack help repopularize meth? each time we end up with an easier to produce, more problematic and dangerous drug, right? and this is a lesson we should have learned from alcohol prohibition. there are many lessons we haven't learned from alcohol prohibition. it helped transfomenter a nation of beer and question drinkers into a -- beer and whine drinkers into liquor drinkers. the last thing you wanted to smuggle was beer. a giant keg of beer has a low return on investment, and you're going to run the risk of going to prison. so you wanted the most pure form of alcohol imaginable. but given choices, how many of you are drinking liquor tonight? you're mostly drinking beer or wine, right? but the drug warriors would say, oh, no, people will always

gravitate toward that, yet any of you can go out to a liquor store and buy grain alcohol. how many of you have tasted grain alcohol since college? [laughter] right? people don't want that stuff. you actually prefer the milder stuff. so this idea the drug warriors try to drive into our minds, i think it's a false one. >> just to underscore one point there which is flexibility. one of the big may notes about the international -- complaints about the international convention is that the u.s. within the conventions and in its policy towards latin america has basically pushed a one size fits all policy designed in washington, and what countries are saying is, hey, our reality may not be your reality. uruguay is a tiny little country of three million people that has a really, a very primarily urban population with solid institutions which has a very good capability to actually create legal regulated markets for cannabis. why can't they do it? why should the international

drug control convention say that your bay can't do that -- uruguay can't do that? so what we really need here is a regime that allows for flexibility, that allows countries to experiment with or even states in this country with what they think works best for them. >> and we have one -- oh, did you have a comment? >> i'll just quickly add on. >> okay. >> what we could do with the billions of dollars that we invest in the prison infrastructure, that gets transferred into education, and then people make wiser decisions. i think, like you said, i mean how there's access to meth, these dirty, cheap, bad drugs, people were able to get access to much more benign drugs like marijuana, they might make decisions that if they had the education to know that this is actually a healthier choice for you. it's a harm reduction model. we might not ever get rid of drugs completely, but there are safer alternatives to the worse options. >> we have one last question over here in the corner for the evening, and then we're going to have to wrap up this portion and move on to the book signing.

so the last question for the evening. >> okay. i wanted to thank you, very, very good presentation. and i think you presented a very good case where the coca leaf is innocuous or even beneficial substance. however, it is true you get cocaine from the coca, and cocaine is quite a, um, well, it's, a substance where you can make a lot of money. and you've got the drug cartels involved in that. how can you control the growth of coca without getting the drug cartels involved and keeping it from being processed into the cocaine that can be, obviously, a lot worse in terms of effects on a society compared to the coca leaf? >> you know, i think this is one of the most important concepts to get across about the war on drugs, and that is why are these substances valued?

why are they worth so much? cocaine, heroin, marijuana, all these drugs are easy to produce, they're cheap to produce, and in a legal market they cost pennies per dose, and yet they're astronomically more expensive. why is that? a lot has to do with our policies of prohibition. as long as there's high demand in countries like the united states, whether smugglers are driven by poverty, greed or to fund an insurgency, for whatever reason they get into the drug economy because they think they'll get away with it, and often they do. the more value we build into this economy so that you can buy a kilo of pure cocaine in colombia for maybe a thousand or $1500, by the time you smuggle it to the streets, by the time the dealers dilute it with whatever garbage they cut can it with, you can get 100,000 to 150,000 or even more for that exact same kilogram. if you sent that exact same

thing by fedex or dhl, assuming it was legal, it would cost you a couple hundred bucks or something. but instead we keep escalating the drug war, and the greater the risk along that smuggling route, the higher the likelihood they get caught, the greater the threat to themselves, the greater risk premium they can charge to the next person down the snuggling line. so -- smuggling line. so we actually create a tremendous indirect price support, if you will, for drug traffickers. and so the people who, the last people who want this drug war to end are the traffickers themselves because without it they're basically transporting minimally-processed agricultural products, and the drug warriors. it's a symbiotic dependency they have. they both need each other to keep their jobs and maintain their livelihoods. so if you legalize, if you ended the drug war, you take away the risks, and suddenly it becomes like any other agricultural commodity like aspirin or

minimally-processed agricultural commodity. >> i'd just like to add a slightly different perspective to that, looking at it from the perspective of if your goal is to disrupt the cocaine market what's the best way to do that, and what we've seen as i think sanho pointed out earlier is that going after the coca leaf has very little impact on the cocaine market. some very interesting studies that an economist has done in colombia. in bogota, and basically he concludes there's this complicated economic cost benefit analysis and concludes that money invested in eradicating coca has almost no impact on the cocaine that is produced and ends up here. if you are going after the cocaine industry, you're going to get a lot more bang for your buck going after the criminal organizations, going after the, after, in, um, going after cocaine shipments, that sort of thing. and, in fact, what we've seen in bolivia is the government has put a greater priority on trying

to interdict the cocaine itself as opposed to forced eradication campaigns. although they have, they do carry out voluntary coca eradication. so i think you have to look at, you know, where do we want to target our law enforcement efforts, and should it be the small farmers grow withing coca, or should it be those criminal organizations and the people within those organizations who are making the best profits from the illicit business? and finally, i would just like to reiterate what sanho said which is, ultimately, it's demand that drives this process. the u.s. continues to be the world's largest consumer of illicit drugs, um, and if we really want to be serious about impacting the drug trade, we have to put a lot more money into treatment and education programs here at home distinguishing between recreational and problematic drug use which is another thing that relates to the question about, you know, better drug

policies. and, ultimately, look at this as a demand-driven problem. >> and with that i wanted to conclude our presentation this evening. i want to thank our panelists, and i want to thank all of you for coming out. [applause] >> you're watching booktv on c-span2. here's our prime time lineup for tonight. starting at 7 p.m. eastern, max boot explores the history of guerrilla warfare. then at 8 p.m. supreme court justice sonia sotomayor describes her childhood and career. at 9:30 p.m. eastern, steven hahn discusses "the political worlds of slavery and freedom" with booktv from the university of pennsylvania. then at 10 is our weekly "after words" program. this week helaine olin with russell wylde, financial contributor to the saturday

evening post. we conclude tonight's prime time programming at 11 p.m. eastern with john allison. his book is "the financial crisis and free market cure." visit booktv.org for more on this weekend's television schedule. >> one can't count the times that americans say that we're the best country in the world. what a marvelously stupid thing to say. of all the countries in the world, everybody thinks their country is pretty good. why do we have to believe that we're the best? what does that, what does that mean? and why do we have to assert it all of the time? and what does it mean to other people