Coca in Bolivia

Coca has been cultivated in medium-altitude parts of the Bolivian Andes since at least the Inca era,^[1] primarily in the Yungas north and east of La Paz. Cultivation expanded substantially in the 1980s into the Chapare region of Cochabamba and some production flowed into the international cocaine market. The US-backed efforts to criminalize and eradicate coca (outside the Yungas) as part of the War on Drugs (as coca is used to make the stimulant, anaesthetic and illegal recreational drug cocaine) were met by the cocalero movement's growing capacity to organize. Violence between drug police and the Bolivian armed forces on one side and the movement on the other occurred episodically between 1987 and 2003. The cocaleros became an increasingly important political force during this period, co-founding the Movement for Socialism – Political Instrument for the Sovereignty of the Peoples party. Coca growers from both the Yungas and the Chapare have advocated for policies of "social control" over coca growing, maintaining a pre-set maximum area of cultivation as an alternative to drug war policies. In 2005, cocalero union leader Evo Morales was elected president of Bolivia. Morales pursued a combined policy of legalizing coca production in the Chapare and Yungas and eradication of the crop elsewhere.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimated that 30,900 hectares of coca were planted in Bolivia in 2009, making Bolivia the third largest producer of coca after Colombia (68,000 hectares) and Peru (59,900).^[2] The UN estimates that 35,148 of 54,608 metric tons produced in Bolivia is sold in unauthorized markets dominated by the cocaine trade, most of it from coca production in the Chapare.^[3] Sales of coca leaf amounted to approximately US$265 million in 2009, representing 14% of all agricultural sales and 2% of Bolivia's GDP.^[4] Coca is legally sold in wholesale markets in Villa Fátima in La Paz and in Sacaba, Cochabamba.

In 2012, Bolivia strategically withdrew from the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, an international drug control treaty ratified by over 188 countries, and rejoined the following year with an exception for traditional coca use.^[5]