Today's New York Times has a Juan Forero story in the business section that actually discusses the benefits of coca. The story extols an energy drink processed from coca leaves as a way to create a (from the viewpoint of the NYT) legitimate export market for coca farmers.
The question: Has Forero been learning about coca's upside from Narconews?
I'm probably missing some nuances here, but here's part of what Forero says:
In this Andean country, that pitch - that KDrink is natural and good for consumers - has the beverage flying off the shelves of some of Peru's biggest supermarket chains. Though priced at $1 a bottle, far more than what other beverages sell for, KDrink is selling about 50,000 bottles a month.
But it is the possibility that KDrink could be sold abroad that is seen as a tantalizing solution for poverty-stricken coca farmers who are periodically forced to eradicate their illicit crops in Washington-backed antidrug efforts.
The rest of the story is at http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/10/business/worldbu
siness/10coca.html?ei=5007&en=5d8b5778042ed949
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Forero Claims to Drink the Stuff
Submitted June 10, 2004 - 12:04 pm by Al GiordanoI don't doubt it (although that makes his Embassy-spun coverage against the coca growers themselves from Colombia to Peru to Bolivia even more loathesome in its knowing falsehood and hypocrisy). I mean, even Pope John Paul II, when he went to Bolivia, drank the tea in public and praised its sacred, god-given, powers.
In the Andes, most wealthy households and restaurants serve coca tea. They may hate the people who grow it, for the "crime" of not wanting to be like them, but they're happy to enjoy the fruits of the labor of others.
But this is par for the course: To Forero, the campesino who grows the coca leaf doesn't become a human being until he starts a soft-drink company.
In any case, did you know that reporters at the New York Times have to take urine tests to prove they are not sniffing cocaine? Drinking coca tea, or soft-drink, sounds like an excellent excuse to cry "false positive" in case the bladder cops invade the cubicle at an inconvenient moment, no? Abbie Hoffman would have loved that one.