coca leaves

President of Bolivia chews Coca leaf at UN in Vienna Pt 2

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President of Bolivia, Evo Morales holds up a coca leaf, puts it in his mouth and chews. "Am I a drug Addict?

South America: Fumigation footage

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This raw unedited footage shows fumigation planes flying low over farms near the Ecuadorian border. They were trailed by clouds of herbicide, which kills crops of coffee, yucca, peanuts and bananas.

The United States-financed spraying is supposed to kill illegal coca bushes, the base ingredient for making cocaine. But as one farmer said, "They fumigated the whole land, corn, rice, bananas, pineapples and forage...the three animals we had, cows and calves, died three weeks later."

President of Bolivia chews Coca leaf at UN in Vienna Pt 1

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President of Bolivia, Evo Morales holds up a coca leaf, puts it in his mouth and chews. "Am I a drug Addict? Are you going to arrest me?".

During his address in Vienna, March 11 2009, he urged the CND to support the decriminalization of coca production and the removal of coca from the UN list of banned substances, because the raw ingredient for cocaine in itself is "not a drug" but a traditional medicine.

Paco in Argentina

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'Paco', a smokable substance made from a mixture of kerosene and leftover coca-leaf paste, is being sold on the streets of Buenos Aires. The drug is commonly sold in deals costing one peso, a price which makes it accessible to children in the neighbourhoods where it is sold. It is reported to be highly addictive with some indications that it can cause brain damage within six months. Local families are shown mobilising against the dealers.

Smoking Paco in Buenos Aires

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Paco, a cheap drug made from cocaine paste. The poor kids in the slums of Argentina and across South American are smoking paco, cooked up from coca leaves and gasoline. The Newsreel tells us how scary this drug is: but they say little about the poverty and despair that permeate the slums where paco is a way of life that some are into by the time they are ten years old. Why here? Why places like this?

Hugo Chavez chews coca paste

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This very brief video shows Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez declaring on the floor of the Parliament that every morning he chews coca paste. This video was produced by Noticias Venezuela, news portal on Youtube.com

Pablo Escobar - El Patrón

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This video is a collection of photographs about the life of Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria, who established the drug cartel of Medellin before his assassination. A song in the background ironically sounds his expected death while making reference to his acts as drug-lord.

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