Almost 75 years after the UN called for the ‘suppression’ of traditional coca chewing in the Andes, in July 2025 the World Health Organization is set to publish its ‘critical’ health review of the coca leaf – from which both cocaine and Coca-Cola derive key ingredients.
The mildly stimulating medicinal plant, which is rich in calcium and eases altitude sickness, has an important role in Andean culture and spirituality. But it has been vilified and stigmatized amid US-led efforts to eradicate cocaine production and longer standing metropolitan attempts to ‘civilize’ Indigenous people across the region, who have used the plant for thousands of years.
