An argument for the leaf, and the reading behind it

The distinction we start from

Two things share a name, and they are not the same. The coca leaf, Erythroxylum coca, has been chewed, brewed and revered by Andean cultures for over 8,000 years and is still used daily by millions of people in Bolivia, Peru and Colombia. Cocaine hydrochloride is a concentrated alkaloid extract. The home page reaches for the comparison of morphine to poppy seed tea, or methamphetamine to the Ephedra plant, and everything else on this site follows from keeping the leaf and the powder apart.

We are not neutral. The site argues that the Drug War turned a plant into a villain and that the story deserves retelling. But we believe in honesty, so the argument is made in the open, with its evidence on the page, and the reader is free to disagree with it.

What the site covers

The ADHD section is the part most likely to be misread, so a word on it. It compares the pharmacology of coca with that of Ritalin and Adderall and asks why the rules differ so much for what the site describes as the same mechanism. That is an argument about policy. It is not a suggestion that anyone treat a condition with a leaf, and nothing on this site is medical advice.

• The Plant: the leaf, its history and its traditional use
• Science: the pharmacology, as the site reads the literature
• ADHD: the site's comparison of coca with prescription stimulants
• The Precedent: how kratom survived a scheduling attempt
• Colombia: the economic case for owning this market
• Harm Reduction

The precedent and the opportunity

In 2016 the DEA tried to schedule kratom as a controlled substance, and the public revolt that followed stopped it. We treat that episode as the most relevant recent precedent for coca reform, and one of the longer Journal pieces walks through what happened and what coca advocates can learn from it. The Colombia section makes the economic case: the country holds a natural monopoly on a crop the site calls the world's most valuable, and we think it should build on that openly, the way China built on silk, rather than apologize for it.

The Journal

The Journal is where the deep dives live: a history of the coca leaf from coastal Peruvian fishing villages to the Inca road system and the silver mines of Potosí, the kratom playbook, the Ritalin, Adderall and coca comparison, and the case for treating coca as Colombia's silk. The home page calls the section deep dives and dispatches, and says the conversation is only starting. A harm reduction section sits alongside the argument, because an honest case for a plant includes an honest account of its risks.

If you want to argue back, add a source or correct something, the contact page is open.