Evo Morales e a folha de coca

Artigo de Evo Morales, publicado na edição de sexta-feira do New York Times, pedindo o fim de uma lei da ONU que, em 1961, equiparou a folha de coca à cocaína e deu um prazo de 25 anos para que a prática de mascar a planta fosse abolido! A Bolívia assinou a convenção em 1976. Portanto, desde 2001 todos os mascadores de coca em terras bolivianas são criminosos internacionais... Let Me Chew My Coca Leaves By EVO MORALES AYMA THIS week in Vienna, a meeting of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs took place that will help shape international antidrug efforts for the next 10 years. I attended the meeting to reaffirm Bolivia’s commitment to this struggle but also to call for the reversal of a mistake made 48 years ago. In 1961, the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs placed the coca leaf in the same category with cocaine — thus promoting the false notion that the coca leaf is a narcotic — and ordered that “coca leaf chewing must be abolished within 25 years from the coming into force of this convention.” Bolivia signed the convention in 1976, during the brutal dictatorship of Col. Hugo Banzer, and the 25-year deadline expired in 2001. So for the past eight years, the millions of us who maintain the traditional practice of chewing coca have been, according to the convention, criminals who violate international law. This is an unacceptable and absurd state of affairs for Bolivians and other Andean peoples. Continua aqui.