The Los Angeles Times tells the story of Coca-Sek, a soft drink with a kick thanks to syrup made by boiling coca leaves, also the source of cocaine. The beverage is produced and bottled by the Nasa, an indigenous community in Inza, Colombia. For quite some time, they've been selling coca-flavored cookies, teas, wines, and other products, but it's Coca-Sek that has been stirring up controversy. From the Los Angeles Times:
Since January, the Nasa indigenous community has been offering the soft drink locally and in neighboring Popayan, where it is bottled. By the end of the year, the Nasa hope to sell Coca-Sek nationwide, targeting the same consumers who drink Gatorade or Red Bull, both highly popular with Colombians…
The Nasa's coca cookies and teas attracted little attention, but the launch of Coca-Sek has ignited controversy in a country where Washington has spent $4 billion since 1999 combating the drug trade and terrorism.
The reasons are myriad: the tribe's market ambitions for the beverage; the inevitable comparisons with the original Coke, which dropped cocaine from its formula in 1905; and the recent election of Bolivian President Evo Morales, an indigenous coca grower who supports the production of legitimate coca products.
Coca-Sek has also reopened a debate over the limits of the sovereignty that indigenous groups in Colombia and other nations are afforded. The Nasa claim a sovereign right to commercialize the soft drink and other coca products, even though the law permitting its use clearly limits it to traditional, not commercial, ends…
Franky Rios, the engineer at Popayan's La Reina bottling plant who oversees the production of the beverage, said Coca-Sek delivers the various vitamins and minerals, including calcium, potassium and magnesium, found in the coca leaf.
"It's better than Gatorade," he said.
Link (Thanks, Paul Saffo!)
UPDATE: Thanks to all the readers who point out that, according to Wikipedia, "Today's Coca-Cola uses "spent" coca leaves, those that have been through a cocaine extraction process, to flavor the beverage. Since this process cannot extract the cocaine alkaloids at a molecular level, the drink still contains trace amounts of the stimulant." Link
