The leaves prevent altitude sickness and allow them to cultivate their crops and cope with raising camelids and sheep.

There are two extreme altitude populations in the world, those in the Himalayas and those in the Andes. People in the Himalayas have a genetic mutation that increases oxygen transport in their systems. People in the Andes lack this mutation and cope with the aid of coca.

The DEA would love nothing more than eradicating the plant completely. They really need to be stopped.

Morales is a smart man, knowing he was facing military intervention from a country that doesn't like uppity Indians who move left and run countries, the excuse being illegal coca production. Cutting it in half is better than the paramilitary DEA has ever done.

Good for him. Legal production has to be preserved.

to allow it to run its OWN affairs.

They had done the people of Bolivia absolutely NO FAVORS whatsoever. Very cruel, ugly history left behind them.

Best wishes to the real citizens of Bolivia.

I was sick from the altitude while traveling in Peru. The innkeeper made me traditional coca tea. Even caffeine has a stronger "high". But it did cure my sickness.

Coca has been successfully used for thousands of years without harming Natives. The drug war needs to avoid trying to change that.

It must be so disgusting, depressing, outrageous to Native Andean citizens that a remote bully in the North has made it its business to try to destroy an element of their world which has been in constant, common, trusted use there all the way back deeply within antiquity.