um, and so tonight we are pleased to welcome ricardo cortes to discuss his latest book, "a secret history of coffee, coe that and cola: a tale of coffee, coca-cola, caffeine, secret formulas, special flavors, special favors and a future of prohibition." cortes is the creator and illustrator of a series of subversive books for all ages, for postally all ages about such things as marijuana, bombing and the jamaican bobsled team. his latest book examines a series of highly addictive substances that have caused many deaths and fueled much, much profit in this how they make their way into the u.s. and what the u.s. government's role has been in insuring that they come into this country, all right? and this evening we are pleased to be joined by two drug policy experts as well. its fellow sanho tree and colette that youngers. and without further ado, i want to hand it over to the panel. [applause] >> thank you. thank you so much foring out here. -- for coming out here. i'm really excited. i just came in from new york. it's great to be here. i'm going to start off by talking about my book, and t

what i really like about the book that ricardo cortes wrote is how he reveals the hypocrisy of the so-called war on drugs. as it was pointed out, it is how coffee is treated differently than coca. i would go a little bit further than sanho tree and say that coca is a mild stimulant, but it doesn't have the edge of coffee. you can drink two cups of coca, and you can still go to sleep. but if you drank coffee, you're up half the night. it doesn't give you that feeling. it's a mild, nice stimulant, and it has a variety of nutritional values. so even though it has been used by indigenous people for nutritional reasons reasons now, there is an effort to create a variety of legal products taking advantage of this. not long ago i was there and i had the opportunity to visit a processing plant that the government has built in this region of bolivia and had the opportunity to sample some of the products. they have a marvelous record, which i really love, their art energy drinks, it has a great flavor, but it's not like drinking red bull. it's a very nice kind of stimulant that would be much better fo