La hoja de coca no es droga

From Reuters Pictures

The above phrase means, " Coca leaf is not a drug" (but it rhymes in Spanish!). You can find shirts and keychains saying that in tourist stores.

Everyone drinks coca leaf tea here, it's like green tea in many countries. And similarly, there are health benefits from consuming the plant. Newcomers are encouraged to drink the tea, as it helps with altitude sickness, supposedly. You can buy candies and chocolates with it, powders and other extracts at health food stores. You don't even get a buzz unless you chew it for quite a while with some mineral lime (and then you get a buzz more steady than what you get with coffee--not such a let-down after, they say, so better). It tastes like grass, though. (Since I don't add sugar to my teas, I prefer anis or cinnamon).

I knew the CIA's policies were ridiculous and destructive, and that they are directing huge amounts of the whole cocaine and crack trade (this is well-known, not conspiracy theory, if you do a bit of homework). But I had no idea how ingrained coca was in the culture, even for people NOT farming it, in the city. It's a grassy-tasting leaf at worst! It's so funny how people are convinced in the US that coca leaf must be nearly coke (and it is true that Coca Cola had coca leaf in it before. Cocaine, no). Cold medicine might as well be equated with meth, cold medicine isn't even good for you (despite possibly making you feel better). It's so interesting how people can be manipulated to think the opposite of what is true.

Which reminds me, I have heard that flourididation of water calcifies the pineal gland, making people more gullible and sheep-like (yes, that would follow if flouride calcifies the pineal gland). I don't know if that is true. I do know that it is leftover toxic waste (rat poison, I think) from a manufacturing product, and it was a pretty good deal for the producers to get paid to put it in th water instead of disposing it. I also know we pushed flouridated water at WIC big time, and was never given a reason for it besides reduced caries. That plain doesn't make sense. Everything we did at WIC had other, more important motivation backing the usage of public funds for it. My boss practically said it herself. The government does not do things to be nice, there are always reasons. It gives food because it is subsidizing certain industries. It promotes breastfeeding because formula makes babies sick, and this is very costly for certain industries (HMOs mainly). It gives formula because the formula industry is also very powerful.

So, anyway, I always wondered what the real push for flouridated water was about. Caries can be reduced with dental cleaning and proper diet. And honestly, there are no special interests that care that much about caries. At the very least, I suspect it's a way of getting rid of an industry waste product. And the more I think about it, the more glad I am of moving to Ithaca, a town that fought mandatory flouridation and won. I love tap water, but maybe there are some cons...