ACTIVE AND AWARE CONSUMERS ARE HEALTHIER CONSUMERS

Illegally Sweet

Andrea Mendoza

Universidad de Los Andes

Design Department

Carrera 1 N° 18A 10

Bogotá, Colombia

Tels: +571 2 59 36 23

+571 3394949

pmendoza@uniandes.edu.co

Have you ever tasted Colombian sweets? ... bocadillos veleños, arequipe con brevas, mantecada, liberales, dulce de mango, de uchuva, caramelos de café, cocada…?

Do you know COCADA? a traditional candy made out of coconuts? Coconuts, those nuts that grow in warm lands where also Cacao is grown? Cacao, you know, the main bitter/sweet ingredient to produce chocolate. Don’t you? Well, the bitter part of this sweet story is that for sure, all you know about Colombia is not related to its “sweets” but to drugs. So, when I mention Coco or Cocoa you might straightaway relate it, at least unconsciously, to Coca.
This paper aims at firstly, clarify, make a difference and explain why is it that Coca is not cocaine and that as such, this plant has lots to tell regarding consumer citizenship in third world countries, although not only there. Secondly, to develop the following idea: “sustainable consumption, in order to go really global, should -also- address the thin border between legal and illegal”, or better, we should tackle the topic of drugs consumption and the fact that third world countries produce much of what developed countries consume.

But such a discussion has been set on different tables at different times, the point here and now is trying to look beyond and see which could be the “positive” side of the legalization discourse. Our aim then, is working on the following questions:

_How can we help choosing sustainable lifestyles, which overcome the borders between what’s legal (in northern countries) and what’s not in the South?

_Could legalization bring about any kind of social sustainability? And

_Would all this fit into the long-term global goals for sustainable development?

Having set this on the table, it is important to deep in the idea that sustainable consumption should assess the responsibility that the developed world has with regards to the production of illegal matters, such as cocaine.

I will focus here on cocaine hence marihuana has had another path thanks, among others, to frankness, transparency, non restrictive policies -in countries such as Holland-, communication means and a very wide variety of users.
Coca is not cocaine

It is crucial to clarify a continuing confusion on the distinction between the Coca leaf and its principal derivate: cocaine. This clarification needs to be reached in order to repair a world-wide prejudice and to prompt at global level, respect for our cultural heritage.

According to Comunidae Segura (a network on ideas and practices regarding human and citizenship security) and to a study published by Harvard University in 1975 (Duke, J. ed. al): “chewing 100 grams of coca is enough to satisfy the nutritional needs of an adult for 24 hours. Thanks to the fact that Coca leaf contains calcium, proteins, vitamins A and E, and other nutrients, the plant offers even better possibilities to the field of human nutrition than it does to that of medicine, where it is commonly used today […] In spite of coca being persecuted for being the raw material of cocaine, scientists discovered that the sap in its leaves contains more then ten different alkaloid substances, and that cocaine strictly speaking amounts to less than 1% of that total. According to pharmacological studies carried out at the University of Caldas, Colombia, if consumed in its natural form, the leaf is not toxic and doesn’t produce dependency. It acts like a mild stimulant, improving attention and the coordination of ideas, akin to concentrated coffee”.

Why then the prejudice against coca?

Pien Metaal³⁰, Political Scientist at the Transnational Institute³¹, replies: “The answer to this question would take up an entire book. To put it in very briefly, the prejudice against coca is basically due to racism and an ignorance of other cultures”.
Urban consumption, a possibility

For over a thousand years South American indigenous peoples have chewed Coca leaves.³² Nowadays its use is not just hidden in isolated exuberant parts of the South American Mountains; the Coca leaf is already arriving to the city markets.

Some weeks ago, there was this huge national gather of farmers at the Bolivar Square in Bogotá, the city’s main square. That market, called Mercados Campesinos is a project supported among others by OXFAM³³, ILSA³⁴ and the European Union, which aims are: promoting local experiences in the management of biodiversity, sustainable agriculture and food sovereignty, providing information, and promoting actions to face the GMO’s problems among communities and organizations. At a larger extend it aims at preventing farmers from running away and abandon the country side; an abandonment, almost a critical mass one, which has many roots: political, such as the fact that farmers stop growing food because they got tired of having the guerrilla passing by their farms and taking away all the harvest “for free” leaving them empty handed; facts such as fear because a lot of the country side, specially in the south of the country is ruled by narcotraffic, a mafia that forces population to grow coca; facts such as the will to go to the city to find the life that TV ads preaches everyone can have; and even because of natural reasons such as el niño and la niña phenomena, because global climate change also affects their harvests and living means.

Now, in this Mercado Campesino, I found a very relevant initiative regarding the topic that we are developing here. There was this one stall selling Coca Products.

The “manager” was a young man with a whole ancestral knowledge behind; he was coming from Bolivia, country in which the discourse towards legalization has moved far ahead. The guy was displaying all sorts of products ranging from coca tea to coca rub cream for aching muscles, passing through coca energetic beverage, coca soap, and a coca powder to be added to soups and juices. As seen, Coca uses range from alleviating hunger and thirst, to combat fatigue and the effects of altitude. Now along with coca leaves, one can also find at the farmer’s market: Quinua, Amaranto and Maka other endemic plants from the Andean mountains which happen to provide Omega 6 and lots of amino-acids, minerals and vitamins³⁵ that are of utmost importance for the human diet. Now, the consumption of these products help preserving a whole range of daily practices and ancient cosmology lying as part of their day to day life, and this talks about other rhythms and ways of being and doing, different to those that contemporary sells us every day.

These products, apart from the Mercados Campesinos, are starting, again, to be sold at two or three shops in Bogotá but have a small success because apart from being banned from big supermarkets, the products are not enough publicized and many consumers see those as a mere tradition without any scientific base. That is why people with a rather privileged purchasing capacity, belonging to higher strata of the society, do not actually buy those, or if they do is just to try it as an exotic something but without looking all the connotations that this new market for Coca products has behind. The world that lies behind this new market, the one of Coca leaves is not the world of cocaine, it implies a clearer labour, which in the case of drugs production is totally dark and full of child labour, expropriation of farmer’s land, fumigation of fields done with substances that are harmful for the population (although the United States affirms that it is all ok³⁶), etc. It is a market that gives value to our territory, our history, fauna, flora, diversity, and especially to our people, the farmers and their endangered roots.

An interesting scenario to address and work on the topic is the international arena. In that line: what if profiting the fact that as said above the Coca plant contains lots of nutrients, the strategy were to address it at an international level but on a radically different way to the one so far used? What if we could bring it to the next universal Exhibition in EXPO-2015 Milan, and set a rather different Colombian pavillion? Expo 2015 will be focus on food and health, (its slogan reads: feeding the planet, energy for life…), so what about having a Colombian pavilion dedicated entirely to that which makes us “famous”? What if we could show all the pros and cons of the issue and face the fame that we have got so far and showing that other side of the Coca plant?. It would not be a pavilion where among things like coffee, emeralds, typical dances, biodiversity or “sweets” we set a small corner to talk about Coca, no, it would have to be a pavillion, totally focused on the plant. Unfortunately, I do not see it happening. Not because, on one hand there is any mobilization towards the legalization of the matter, and on the other, because there is fear on the air…

Although the real fear should come from the direction in which humankind seems to be moving towards.

Having said that, the moment to take the topic down to earth has come. An example is needed; and here I will start with a personal experience: Having come back from Europe, after a couple of years studying abroad, I noticed that there were more foreigners on the streets. Looking back, that was not so common before, given the fame that Colombia had/has, as an extremely dangerous country, so dangerous that some governments of foreigner lands used to beware their citizens before their depart.

Finding much more tourists, is not bad, but I have always looked at these “intrepid” tourists as a hazard, given that Colombia with such a great deal of biodiversity, cheap food, wonderful landscapes and welcoming people, fulfills the requirements to develop an eco-tourism industry, an industry where in not well prepared countries, sets its population at risk to be spoiled; that happens already world-wide from porters, monks and kids in Nepal to indigenous in the Amazon. So the fact of seeing this proliferation of foreigners in my country provoked a slightly disturbing feeling in me.
Some weeks after my arrival, I learnt that a journalist had made a special reportage following the footprints of the tourist path of drugs. I knew that of course, if Colombia has fame because of something is because Cocaine it is produce there, but somehow I had never acknowledged that there was a “path of Cocaine”!, it might sound naïve but, given that the drug topic is so “familiar” for us, I have never got into senses of the fact that, just like in Italy there is the wine path, or in France, Quebec and Switzerland there are routes du fromage, in Colombia we have the path of Cocaine. People come from all over the world, especially Europe, the United States and Israel to “taste” drugs. And that is both, disrupting and offensive hence with which “ethical right” do countries like the United States claim that it is us who have to control Coca crops when they have not being able to control consumption up there?!.

Now, this goes deeper because here we are talking directly about sustainability, the ability to sustain life, the ways to reach well being and quality of life, not only for those who spoil their lives by consuming drugs but for those who produce it.

Usually, when one says to a child: “do not do this”, the first thing he’ll do is to defy the order. It seems that breaking the bans, disobey the law or tear the constraints that in a way or another threaten our freedom, are a constant in human’s behaviour. Promoters of legalization of tobacco and alcohol in the United States understood that long time ago.

In our case, we are talking about two kinds of legalization, one aiming at debunk the fact that Coca plant is, to say it briefly: “bad” and then give back its proper “legal” value; the other, moving towards a legalization of a substance that has lots to do with social responsibility but also with freedom and the fact that by having it illegal is nurturing the worlds of guerrilla and narcotraffic.

Cocaine has had gone so far in its “success”, but why? That is the first thing one has to ask. Now, the answer is way to easy to find: because it is illegal. And it is illegal from different perspectives: a. illegal from viewpoint of the people who grow it, but they know that their lands will be “harvesting” more money in less time, avoiding all the troubles that nowadays they face regarding home-economics, education and transportation means of local products such as fruits or vegetables.

b. illegal from the viewpoint of the drug’s dealers; but being it a prohibited merchandise, they can play with its cost and sell it at their willing price, and finally, most important, c. illegal from the “user’s” viewpoint for whom by means of Cocaine they enter a certain social circle, fight depression, and keep awake hence according to Freud in his work “Über Coca” (1884), cocaine is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant and a social “gadget”, meaning: “cocaine’s status as a club drug shows its immense popularity among the ‘party crowd”³⁷. What users cannot figure out is how addictive the substance is.

Now where did the “legalization” got lost if, “in 1885 the U.S. manufacturer Parke-Davis sold cocaine in various forms, including cigarettes, powder, and even a cocaine mixture that could be injected directly into the user’s veins with the included needle. The company promised that its Cocaine products would “supply the place of food, make the coward brave, the silent eloquent and ... render the sufferer insensitive to pain.”³⁸.

With all this landscape it is far well understandable the fact that foreign addicts come buying cocaine to Colombia hence, there is no other county selling it so, so absurdly cheap.

Legalization, the main part of the discussion lies here. But as said legalization is difficult to reach. I do not see it happening in the next 80 years. Nevertheless a start has been rising in other latitudes such as Peru or Bolivia (who has sold it under formal terms to Coca-Cola company, hence a clue ingredient of the beverage was, or is the Coca leaf, they claim that is a flavor enhancer…) .

Amira Armenta, working at the Transnational Institute states that another possible argument to explain Coca policies has to do with the production of the soft drink Coca-Sek, made of Coca leaves just like Coca-Cola, according to her: “the indigenous population from the Cauca region reported that the multinational company would pressure to veto the Coca-Sek produced by the community. But in spite all this, in 2003, the Colombian company Nasa Coca won a Coca-Cola trademark infringement suit that tried to ban any publicity using this name […]. To prohibit Coca tea right now is to once again submit the communities to foreign interests”.

Conclusions

With this panorama it seems that the academia could/should start promoting the look towards the “illegal” in order to assess its worldwide relevance and tackle its possible transitions on a planet whereas the only thing that prohibition awakes is desire.

In this regard, Antanas Mockus³⁹ former mayor of Bogotá used to say: “during my period as Major what I wanted was people acting as real committed citizens. For that, I convinced them to obey the law, even if this meant that I had to modify the law”. And that refers not only to policy laws but also to the laws that regulate the collective mind.

Now, could the illegality topic go beyond disciplines such as Law or Economics and start being addressed by the world of, for instance, Design? Could we ask citizens, just as the motto of an initiative called Dott, Design of The Times in the UK asked: “who designs your life”? Could we prompt self-responsibility and respect at both personal and social levels? In this regard Victor Papanek⁴⁰, a well-known designer used to say: “design has become the most powerful tool with which man shapes his tools and environments (and, by extension, society and himself)”.

The above mentioned are some of the questions that we aim at leaving for your consideration. But furthermore, we could ask if Coca plant could be instrumental in the so called “sustainable development” discourse?.
To end up, there is to say that maybe all this is not even about the war against drugs… Maybe that is just a distracter, a very disrupting one, because maybe, the real problem lies where “Asian Dub Foundation” an English group of musicians, expressed in one of their concerts while visiting Colombia. They said: “Colombia: the developed world does not want to go to your country and help you to fight drugs… what they actually want, is your oil!”

Oil… maybe the problem is that hidden fossil treasure. But that is another story, the story of a civilization based on oil. A, nor bitter neither sweet element in nature. An element that for our civilization seems to be utmost tasty. Oil, petroleum, cars, commodities derived; things in which investments are nowadays done, investments in research to find it and produce more.

If all the money that is invested in the Oil industry or all the money that is invested in fighting drugs, fumigating and deviating the actual problems of humanity were invested in education, a big deal of the global troubles could be solved. Education aiming at: inform civilians regarding what Coca crops actually are; re-give value to ancient practices related to Andean endemic plants; open people’s minds to the possibilities that traditional plants offer, promote respect towards the unknown, and therefore fighting the deviating fears of our civilization.

But specially, an education which helps consumers in the process of attaining criteria and accordingly, adopt a self-position in front of the Coca crop, being it legal or not.

our 100-year heritage". Surv Ophthalmol 29: 300–307. doi:10.1016/0039-6257(85)90153-5.

Barcelona : Anagrama.

http://www.comunidadesegura.org/?q=en/node/35426

http://ilsa.org.co:81/node/155

www.corpovisionarios.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocaine#cite_ref-19

http://www.Cocatea.com/producto.php?idp=2700001001

http://www.applesanity.com/fetish/blow/ http://www.havocscope.com/Drugs/cocaine.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocaine#cite_ref-17

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocaine#cite_ref-barlow_15-0

http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/Super-Coca-TNI8sep04.htm

The UNEP Global Environmental Citizenship Project and the Participation of Latin American Consumer Organizations

Luis Flores Mimica

The Global Environmental Citizenship Project GEF is an ongoing pilot initiative for Latin America, coordinated by the UNEP regional Office for Latin America and The Caribbean, with the objective of generating greater public awareness, increasing levels of understanding of global environmental issues and mobilising support in the countries of the region for the objectives of the GEF thematic areas.