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Posted 2002-10-23, 07:48 PM
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Someone in my ecconomics class had a newspaper article the other day. There's a country in South America that produces more than half the world's cocaine supply. During the Clinton administration, the US offered to pay the X huge amount of money to stop growing cocaine. They didn't stop, but (I *think*) they took the money anyway. Recently we (Bush? Oh hell I don't know. The article damn well may have said "we" for all I know) decided to go fumigate and destroy their crop.
That brought up a question in my mind. What does a cocaine plant look like? Dictionary.com defines cocaine as,
"A colorless or white crystalline alkaloid, C17H21NO4, extracted from coca leaves, sometimes used in medicine as a local anesthetic especially for the eyes, nose, or throat and widely used as an illicit drug for its euphoric and stimulating effects."
So I looked up coca and here is what it had:
"1. Any of certain Andean evergreen shrubs or small trees of the genus Erythroxylum, especially E. coca, whose leaves contain cocaine and other alkaloids.
2. The dried leaves of such a plant, chewed by people of the Andes for a stimulating effect and also used for extraction of cocaine and other alkaloids. "
So.. what does an E. coca look like?
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