*The Legal aspects for Importation of Coca
Leaf.
The Stepan Company
(a $400 million American Stock Exchange company) of Maywood,
New Jersey imports 175,000 KG of coca leaves into the United
States each year. The leaves come from some of the same farms
that supply the Columbian drug cartels. Its finished products
end up into nearly everyone in the United States.
One finished product
of course is cocaine, which exit the buildings in armored trucks.
Tincture of cocaine is one application: in an ointment, it numbs
nerve endings in a hurry and it causes vasoconstriction (closure
of peripheral blood vessels). The same medical action that controls
bleeding in the emergency room is the one that rots away the
bridge of a coke abuser's nose.
The other major
product is the coca in Coca-Cola©. The Coke formula is
one of the most closely guarded corporate secrets in America.
The company concedes to using a 'decocainized flavor essence
in the coca leaves'-one of the few Coke ingredients the company
will publicly acknowledge. When asked why the company uses such
a troublesome product as coca leaves, its representative said
that 'each ingredient adds to the flavor profile.'
Flavor scientists
say that the mysterious essence has no significant taste of
its own , but acts as an 'enhancer' PepsiCo Inc. does not use
the coca leaf. Flavor scientist Nicholas Feurstein thinks that
the average guzzler might well notice the difference if Coke
stopped using it. ..
The very first batch
of Coca-Cola contained an extract of coca leaves back in 1886.
Coke had in fact contained traces of cocaine ever since John
'Doc' Pemberton created the drink. At the turn of the century,
a public outcry erupted against cocaine. Doctors and editorialists
began taking aim at Coca-Cola.
Now the company
had a catch-22 problem. If it removed the coca leaf from the
product's manufacture, it could no longer defend use of the
name. If cocaine was used, an angry public would boycott Coca-Cola.
An elaborate extraction process was devised.
The leaf is ground
up, mixed with sawdust, soaked in bicarbonate of soda, percolated
with toluene, steam blasted, mixed with powdered Kola nuts,
and then pasteurized. The Coke-Cola company, forever fearful
of the DEA and the drug lords, is a stickler on security and
quality.
Drug lords have
a less formal way to extract cocaine: they use kerosene as a
solvent; the drug leaches out like tea from a tea bag. Cocaine
is then recovered by evaporation.
<<<<The
Coca-Cola company itself is extremely squeamish about the subject
of coca leaves. A 1948 one-paragraph reference to the Maywood's
production of coca extract so enraged top Coke officials that
they threatened to slash all Wall Street Journal advertising
in retaliation. An internal Coke memo, unearthed by historian
Frederick Allen blasted the Wall Street Journal s 'an instrument
of the chiselers and the substituters' and suggested sending
stories to the rival Journal of Commerce, 'which has
not felt tempted to publish bits or pieces of our formula.'
At the present as
in the past (fifteen years ago) you will find in the states
a new revitalized Mate Coca version, that have been de-cocanized.unfortunately
the process removes not only the alkhloids but the delicate
flavor and also the natural nutrients as vitamins and minerals
Ttry
to buy the original one´s that raises at the High Andean
Mountains of Peru, and prefer if it is possible the loose leaves
that are
fresh and green, try but as natural as possible. As Dr. Weil´s
say ....my favorite beverage..!!"
Coke anyone?
..... CJ '99
Resource
Miller, M. "Quality
Stuff: Firm is Peddling Cocaine, and Deals are legit" Wall
Street Journal 27 Oct 1994.Weil,
A. "Letters from the Andes The New Politics of Coca" The
New Yorker May, 1995 pp7
*The information
was obtained from the Internet
