Coca in Bolivia

Coca has been cultivated in medium-altitude parts of the Bolivian Andes since at least the Inca era,[1] primarily in the Yungas north and east of La Paz.

[2] The UN estimates that 35,148 of 54,608 metric tons produced in Bolivia is sold in unauthorized markets dominated by the cocaine trade, most of it from coca production in the Chapare.

[4] Coca is legally sold in wholesale markets in Villa Fátima in La Paz and in Sacaba, Cochabamba.

Farmers turned to coca for its quick economic return, light weight, yield of four crops annually, and the abundance of United States dollars available in the trade, (a reliable store of value in a hyperinflated economy).

The country was the second largest grower of coca in the world, supplying approximately 15 percent of the United States cocaine market in the late 1980s.

Analysts believed that exports of coca paste or cocaine generated from US$600 million to US$1 billion annually in the 1980s, depending on prices and output.

The production of cocaine has helped indirectly the stabilization of democracy in Bolivia by increasing incomes and standards of living, especially during crisis.

[8] Some US priorities, however, were excluded from the law which bans defoliants, herbicides, and aerial spraying of crops in eradicating coca.

The UNODC said it would "continue to work in Bolivia in accordance with its mandates to support the national system of drug control and the country's international cooperation in these matters.

[6] A four-year government eradication campaign begun in 1989 sought to convert 55 percent of coca areas into legal crops.

[14] The strategy of the Morales government has been described as "combating drug trafficking by working cooperatively with coca growers to diversify crops and promote alternative development."