Coca

This article is about the four cultivated plants in the family Erythroxylaceae. Not to be confused with Cocaine, Coca-Cola, Corpus of Contemporary American English, Coca (disambiguation), or Cocoa (disambiguation).
Coca
Erythroxylum novogranatense var. novogranatense leaves and berries
Source plant(s)
Part(s) of plantLeaves, fruits
Geographic originAndes[1]
Active ingredientsCocaine, benzoylecgonine, ecgonine, others
Legal status

Coca is any of the four cultivated plants in the family Erythroxylaceae, native to western South America. Coca is known worldwide for its psychoactive alkaloid, cocaine.

Different early-Holocene peoples in different areas of South America independently transformed Erythroxylum gracilipes plants into quotidian stimulant and medicinal crops now collectively called Coca.[2] Archaeobotanical evidence show that Coca crops have been grown for well over 8,000 years in South America.[3] They have had and still have a significant role in spiritual, economic, social and political dimensions for numerous indigenous cultures in the Andes and the Western Amazon arising from the use of the leaves as drugs and mild, daily stimulant.[4]

The plant is grown as a cash crop in the Argentine Northwest, Bolivia, Alto Rio Negro Territory in Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Peru, even in areas where its cultivation is unlawful.[5][6] There are some reports that the plant is being cultivated in the south of Mexico, by using seeds imported from South America, as an alternative to smuggling its recreational product cocaine.[7] It also plays a fundamental role in many traditional Amazonian and Andean cultures as well as the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in northern Colombia.[6]

The cocaine alkaloid content of dry Erythroxylum coca var. coca leaves was measured ranging from 0.23% to 0.96%.[8] Coca-Cola used coca leaf extract in its products from 1885 until about 1903, when it began using decocainized leaf extract.[9][10][11] Extraction of cocaine from coca requires several solvents and a chemical process known as an acid–base extraction, which can fairly easily extract the alkaloids from the plant.

  1. ^ Drug Enforcement Administration (April 23, 2013). "Coca: History". Internet Archive. Archived from the original on October 25, 2014. Retrieved February 16, 2015.
  2. ^ White, Dawson M; Huang, Jen-Pan; Jara-Muñoz, Orlando Adolfo; MadriñáN, Santiago; Ree, Richard H; Mason-Gamer, Roberta J (2021-01-01). Carstens, Bryan (ed.). "The Origins of Coca: Museum Genomics Reveals Multiple Independent Domestications from Progenitor Erythroxylum gracilipes". Systematic Biology. 70 (1): 1–13. doi:10.1093/sysbio/syaa074. ISSN 1063-5157. PMC 7744036. PMID 32979264.
  3. ^ Dillehay, Tom D.; Rossen, Jack; Ugent, Donald; Karathanasis, Anathasios; Vásquez, Víctor; Netherly, Patricia J. (December 2010). "Early Holocene coca chewing in northern Peru". Antiquity. 84 (326): 939–953. doi:10.1017/S0003598X00067004. ISSN 0003-598X. S2CID 162889680.
  4. ^ Bauer, Irmgard (2019-11-26). "Travel drugs, coca and cocaine: demystifying and rehabilitating Erythroxylum – a comprehensive review". Tropical Diseases, Travel Drugs and Vaccines. 5 (1): 20. doi:10.1186/s40794-019-0095-7. ISSN 2055-0936. PMC 6880514. PMID 31798934.
  5. ^ Plowman, T (1979). "Botanical Perspectives on Coca". Journal of Psychedelic Drugs. 11 (1–2): 103–117. doi:10.1080/02791072.1979.10472095. PMID 522163.
  6. ^ a b Ramos, Danilo Paiva (2018). Círculos de coca e fumaça (1a ed.). São Paulo, SP, Brasil. ISBN 978-85-7715-555-2. OCLC 1110459938.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  7. ^ De la Cruz, Manuel. "Policía mexicana realiza el primer hallazgo de cultivos de coca en el sur del país". La Republica. Archived from the original on 10 September 2017. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  8. ^ Plowman, T; Rivier L (1983). "Cocaine and Cinnamoylcocaine content of thirty-one species of Erythroxylum (Erythroxylaceae)". Annals of Botany. 51. London: 641–659. doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.aob.a086511.
  9. ^ May, Clifford D (1988-07-01). "How Coca-Cola Obtains Its Coca". The New York Times. A Stepan laboratory in Maywood, N.J., is the nation's only legal commercial importer of coca leaves, which it obtains mainly from Peru and, to a lesser extent, Bolivia. Besides producing the coca flavoring agent for Coca-Cola, Stepan extracts cocaine from the coca leaves, which it sells to Mallinckrodt Inc., a St. Louis pharmaceutical manufacturer that is the only company in the United States licensed to purify the product for medicinal use.
  10. ^ "Coca Leaf". Transnational Institute. 1 January 2015.
  11. ^ Cite error: The named reference :0 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).