Thaindian News

La Paz, June 24 (IANS/EFE) Lawmakers voted to pull Bolivia out of a UN drug convention because the world body refuses to decriminalise the chewing of coca leaf, the plant that is also the raw material for cocaine production.

The government-controlled lower house, acting at President Evo Morales’ request, passed a bill Wednesday that would remove Bolivia from the 1961 United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs after reading a petition from Morales and hearing arguments from Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca.

The measure also is likely to pass in the Senate, where supporters of the leftist Morales also are in the majority.

Bolivia, like neighbouring Peru, permits limited cultivation of coca for legal use in cooking, folk medicine and Andean religious rites. Unadulterated coca is a mild stimulant that counteracts the effects of altitude sickness and suppresses hunger pangs.

“The 1961 convention prohibits coca-leaf chewing. If we don’t (withdraw), our brothers and sisters will not be able to take part in this ancestral practice,” Choquehuanca said.

The legislators’ vote came on the eve of the release of a UN annual report on coca cultivation in Andean countries and before Bolivia’s former drug czar, Gen. Rene Sanabria, pleaded guilty Thursday in US federal court in Miami to federal cocaine-trafficking charges.

Bolivia, the world’s third-largest cocaine producer after Colombia and Peru, acknowledged a few days ago that the area under coca cultivation has grown but said the new figure will be announced in July when the United Nations completes its survey of coca plantations.

The survey was delayed by a recent plane crash in which four UN officials were killed.

Opposition lawmakers slammed Morales’ request to Congress - submitted without prior notice - and said it ran counter to the country’s efforts to combat drug trafficking, although the government insists it will respect Bolivia’s commitments in that regard.

–IANS/EFE
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