Bolivia,EE.UU: The Coca Plant: Bolivia's Cultural Heritage, the War on Drugs, American Hypocrisy http://alainet.org/active/44069&lang=es

Perhaps the most controversial provision (for the United States and its Western allies) in Bolivia's new Constitution is the one that protects coca and its traditional usage, on the grounds that it forms part of the countryʼs cultural heritage. Article 384 of the new constitution (Fourth Part, Title II, Chapter Seven: Coca) stipulates:"The State shall protect native and ancestral coca as cultural patrimony, a renewable natural resource of Bolivia's biodiversity, and as a factor of social cohesion; in its natural state it is not a narcotic. Its revaluing, production,commercialization, and industrialization shall be regulated by law."

It is significant, that the "coca" clause in Bolivia's new constitution validates the protection of the traditional practice not only because it is part of the country's cultural heritage but also on the grounds that coca is "a renewable natural resource of Bolivia's biodiversity". In the crucially important policy area of designated dangerous drugs, Caricom and other countries of the Global South must beware of automatically aligning their national interests, policies, and actions with the vagaries of America's policies which, as illustrated by the history of cocaine use in the U.S., are driven by passing domestic trends, national preoccupations, and the prevailing ideology.