Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Dried Coca Leaf in Cochabamba, Bolivia

Cochabamba (Chapare)
Secado de la hoja de Coca (Dried Coca Leaf)

Fotos: Oscar Ruiz

This is unused and was bought in 2013.

- - - - - - -

Cochabamba is a city in central Bolivia that is known as the "City of Eternal Spring" and "The Garden City" due to its spring-like temperatures year round.  It was featured as a location in the story in the 1983 film, Scarface. Powerful drug lord Alejandro Sosa resided there, governed large coca plantations and owned cocaine labs where upon further refining, would be shipped to Tony Montana in Florida.

- - -

Coca is known throughout the world for its psychoactive alkaloid, cocaine. The alkaloid content of coca leaves is low, between 0.25% and 0.77%. This means that chewing the leaves or drinking coca tea does not produce the intense high people experience with cocaine.

Cocaine-free coca leaf extract is used in Coca-Cola. Extraction of cocaine from coca requires several solvents and a chemical process known as an acid/base extraction, which can fairly easily extract the alkaloids from the plant.

No comments: