'All About Cocaine' is a website which gives the facts about cocaine. It gives information about the effects of using cocaine, biological insights into using, its production, facts about its consumption in countries around the world, and much more. Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. This article gives an insight into the coca plant, what it is, how it has been used by indigenous peoples of the Andes and how it is taken. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix-ine, forming cocaine.

The coca bush takes two years to mature at which point the leaves are picked and ground up. A hectare of mature coca bushes can yield around 2.7 metric tons of dry leaf, which in turn yields about 7.44 kilos of cocaine. It takes about 363 kilos of dry leaves to yield one kilo of cocaine. The amount of pure cocaine in the goods depends on the alkaloid level of the leaf. In the Chapare region of Bolivia they have a 0.72 percent alkaloid content. Alternatively, coca leaves can be infused in liquid and consumed like tea. The effects of drinking coca tea are a mild stimulation and mood lift.

Coca leaves are typically mixed with an alkaline substance (such as lime) and chewed into a wad that is retained in the mouth between gum and cheek (much in the same as chewing tobacco is chewed) and sucked of its juices. Visitors to the city of Cuzco in Peru, and La Paz in Bolivia are greeted with the offering of coca leaf infusions (prepared in tea pots with whole coca leaves) purportedly to help the newly-arrived traveler overcome the malaise of high altitude sickness. The free and legal commercialization of dried coca leaves under the form of filtration bags to be used as "coca tea" has been actively promoted by the governments of Peru and Bolivia for many years as a drink having medicinal powers.

It has been promoted as an adjuvant for the treatment of cocaine dependence. In one controversial study, coca leaf infusion was used -in addition to counseling- to treat 23 addicted coca-paste smokers in Lima, Peru. The duration of abstinence from smoking coca-paste increased from an average of 32 days prior to treatment to 217 days during treatment. Relapses fell from an average of four times per month before treatment with coca tea to one during the treatment.

Coca herbal infusion (also referred to as Coca tea) is used in coca-leaf producing countries much as any herbal medicinal infusion would elsewhere in the world. In order to prevent the demonization of this product, its promoters publicize the unproven concept that much of the effect of the ingestion of coca leaf infusion would come from the secondary alkaloids, as being not only quantitatively different from pure cocaine but also qualitatively different.

Here then are some bare facts about coca. An amazing plant that lives in south west America. This plant has instigated wars and death across numerous countries. For many peoples of the south Americas it continues to represent more than a product, but heritage as well.

About the Author

Richard Penn is an expert on cocaine and its production. He has written thesis on the subject. He now provides research for:
www.AllAboutCocaine.Net