Drug Market Quotes
The cocoa plant produces leaves which the Bolivian Indians have been chewing for centuries as mild stimulant and assuager of hunger pangs. However with Western chemistry, the cocoa leaves can be turned into cocaine. The Cocoa crop has a ready market domestically and a hugely inflated profit for exports to the illicit drug trade. The United States has put pressure on Bolivian politicians to make growing of the cocoa plant illegal, and has supplied the chemicals and the funds to destroy the cocoa crop wherever they find it growing. This angers small peasant farmers for whom this is the most profitable crop and one of the few on which they can even grow in much of the country; it also angers the vast majority of the Indian population—about half the country—as they are pressured to give up chewing cocoa. The Indians have virtually no harmful effect from chewing cocoa leaves and say that the problem is with the Gringos who are drug users and cannot control themselves. Why should they give up their preferences, traditions and customs because the North Americans are irresponsible and cannot control themselves? Chavez, the first ethnic Indian President of Bolivia took the position that the peasants and peasant farmers should not have to sacrifice to benefit the rich Americans and others in the world. America has a prevention and education problem and Americans should stop buying the cocaine—a product on which the Bolivian Indians make almost nothing; they would be happy just growing leaves for the domestic market.
