Bolivia is taking a stand against the drug war. It’s not just the pope’s coca tea

GlobalPost
Pope Francis in Bolivia

LIMA, Peru — The symbolism was powerful: As soon as Pope Francis landed in Bolivia Wednesday, he accepted the gift of a “ch’uspa,” a small woven bag containing dried coca leaves.

The leaves are the key ingredient in cocaine, but harmless when chewed raw, as Andean people have done since time immemorial to ward off altitude sickness. Bolivian President Evo Morales hanged the ch’uspa right around the pontiff’s neck.

On the flight over, Francis has already fulfilled his wish to drink coca tea. That might have done him good. La Paz’s airport is 13,000 feet above sea level, and the 78-year-old Argentine head of the Catholic Church had half a lung removed as a child. 

That sent a powerful message in support of millions of poor Andeans, whose ancestral crop cultivation became a crime worldwide with the 1961 United Nations convention on narcotics. But Bolivia, Peru and Colombia still permit limited coca for traditional use — provided it is not processed into cocaine. 

Morales has long campaigned against the UN treaty. 

Last year he won an exemption for Bolivia — against Washington’s opposition — although coca exports remain banned. That means the country can’t market coca tea, candies or other products abroad that could prove money-spinners for some of the neediest communities in Latin America.

But coca leaves are not Bolivia's only strong stand against global drug war policies. 

To mark the pope's visit, earlier this month Morales pardoned thousands of prisoners, many of them drug offenders. 

The pope opposes legalizing drugs. But he also shows compassion for those caught up in their tentacles. On Friday, he is due to visit a Bolivian prison packed with drug offenders. 

And Bolivia could go further. Its congress is expected to debate relaxing the nation's drug law, which has filled its jails with small-time drug dealers and smugglers.

Passed in 1988, that law established “excessively harsh sentencing policies … that do not distinguish between the level or gravity of the crime committed,” say campaigners at the Washington Office on Latin America and the Andean Information Network. 

If the reform passes, Bolivia would follow in the footsteps of Ecuador, which regards drugs mules more as victims than perpetrators of the drugs trade. It recently released thousands from jail and is now concentrating its interdiction efforts against big time drug lords.

More from GlobalPost: Ecuador is freeing thousands of convicted drug mules

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