| Hans-Günter Meyer-Thompson | International
Coca Summit in Peru Focuses Push to End Global Prohibition
Coca Summit in Peru Focuses Push to End Global Prohibition
The United Nations must “decolonize” global drug laws and deschedule the coca leaf, which is used daily by millions of Andean people for nutritional, medicinal, and cultural purposes, the vice president of Bolivia told a coca summit outside of Cusco, Peru.
From February 3 to 7, policymakers, activists, scientists and Indigenous leaders gathered for the “Wisdom of the Leaf” event organized by the McKenna Academy, an ethnobotanical education nonprofit. They discussed how best to apply pressure on the UN and the World Health Organization to support reform, with the WHO due to publish its “critical” review of the evidence around the global coca ban in September. (Filter, USA, 20.02.2025)