In November, the World Health Organisation (WHO) will issue its long-awaited recommendation on whether the coca leaf should remain listed under the UN’s most restrictive drug controls.
For decades, the coca leaf has been treated in international law as little more than raw material for cocaine. The 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, following the advice of a deeply flawed 1950 WHO report, placed coca in Schedule I, equating its potential harm from use with that of heroin. This decision criminalised traditional use by Indigenous peoples in the Andes, despite millennia of practice, ignoring both its cultural and medical significance.
Now, with WHO experts due to report their findings in September, attention is turning to whether the organisation can finally correct the record.
Critical timeline
Bolivia’s government initiated the review in 2023, arguing that coca’s scheduling was based on flawed information and infringed on indigenous rights. Since then, the WHO has tasked independent experts with conducting research on coca, its harms, and the potential impacts of change. Those experts are due to report their findings to the Executive Committee in late September, a crucial step on the pathway to potential change.
From there, the Expert Committee will meet in late October, finalising its report and recommendation in time for member states to consider ahead of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs’ (CND) reconvened session in December. The formal vote on coca’s scheduling, however, won’t take place until March 2026 in Vienna.
Uncertain outcomes
There are essentially three potential outcomes from the review. First, no action. Either the WHO makes no recommendation, which would result in no possibility of a vote, or states vote to maintain coca’s current Schedule I classification. Few expect the WHO to recommend keeping coca in its current schedule. “It’s hard to imagine they’d come to the conclusion that coca belongs where it is,” according to John Walsh, Director for Drug Policy and the Andes at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA).
If the review recommends a change in Coca’s scheduling, it would likely move down to either a Schedule II or III – still keeping its classification as a ‘narcotic drug’ subject to most treaty provisions. However, such a move would allow for certain traditional uses of coca and could be seen as a political compromise between those favouring full rescheduling and those favouring prohibition. This would create a clear difference in the scheduling for Coca and cocaine, similar to how opium products and the opium poppy are scheduled. Opium poppies are in Schedule II, while heroin is in Schedule I, reflecting the differing harms of the plant and its derivatives. Though rescheduling might be the most politically expedient outcome, and may align more closely with the UN’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, it would still be very short of full removal, according to Walsh.
Finally, the result hoped for by many states and drug policy reform advocates: coca could be completely removed from the drug control treaties. This would mean that coca “would no longer be considered a controlled substance. It would open the way to legal natural commerce,” according to Walsh.
While the size of such a market is hard to estimate, its significance would be massive. Coca teas, flours, and medicinal extracts already circulate domestically in the Andes – only legally within Bolivia as the country had left and re-joined the UN drug control conventions in 2013 – but international markets remain blocked by treaty restrictions.
Yet there are also risks. Walsh cautions: “There’s a concern, even among those who want coca removed, that those who have guarded the tradition could be undermined.” Comparisons to the cannabis market loom large, where capital from the Global North has quickly moved into spaces originally meant by marginalised communities. The vision of a future un-criminalised market for coca opens future concerns, such as control mechanisms that avoid biopiracy and endorse fair benefit-sharing, particularly with communities that have been destroyed by the plant’s prohibition. The Nagoya Protocol, which addresses protections against the exploitation of genetic resources and Indigenous knowledge, is often cited as a model for future control.
Even in the case of full removal, coca wouldn’t be completely free of international prohibition. “Coca destined to become cocaine would still be illegal; that wouldn’t be optional,” according to Walsh. Better controls to determine the end use of coca would have to be developed.
Politics and removal
In theory, removing coca from Schedule I requires only a simple majority of CND member states. In practice, however, bloc politics loom large. “As a formal matter, there’s no veto. But in a practical matter, the EU looms large,” Walsh explains, given the bloc’s significant role in driving global demand for cocaine. If European states vote together against rescheduling, the motion would be unlikely to pass. However, if the EU allows states to vote individually, the change is much more likely to happen.
The United States’ position is also critical. As Walsh puts it, “It would be difficult to imagine if the US would be supportive of removing coca entirely.” But, though the US was once the world’s biggest supporter of draconian drug laws, its international influence may be waning. The current administration’s defunding of global aid, much of which supported harm reduction and drug prevention programmes, have reduced the US’ ability to enact soft power internationally. President Trump’s “transactional” politics, according to Walsh, may be a signal to countries that they can go their own way on policy while the US is pursuing a more isolationist approach to international relations.
Russia, too, will be notably absent. Having not achieved sufficient votes to remain part of the CND in April 2025, Russia will not be voting on UN drug-related matters from 2026 onwards. Walsh said that “Russia has taken the mantle from the US as ‘drug warrior’” and could’ve stood staunchly against coca’s reclassification. Their absence, therefore, may open new horizons.
The coca review is primarily supported by Bolivia and Colombia, with Canada, Czechia, Malta, Mexico, and Switzerland publicly supporting their position. Some coca-producing nations, notably Peru, are not in favour of reclassification. The country’s drug control agency, DEVIDA, recently argued that reclassifying coca “could become a perverse incentive to increase its diversion to the production of cocaine,” as well as increasing deforestation and food insecurity, especially for indigenous people.
But for some, Peru’s lack of support for the review has more to do with its political priorities than any attempt at harm reduction. “Peru’s denial to support this is indeed very odd, but is a reflection of the kind of political regime it is living under,” says Pien Metaal of the Transnational Institute (TNI). “The Boluarte government is the typical white Lima elite that has ruled Peru over the past decades, with no connection to the hearts and minds of the Peruvian people.”
Indigenous resistance
The roots of the current review go back to decades of Indigenous advocacy. The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples recognises the right to maintain and protect traditional medicines and cultural practices. Yet international drug treaties continue to criminalise coca chewing and related practices in many countries.
“There has never been a credible medical or scientific basis for the prohibition of coca leaf,” according to Metaal. “Its inclusion in the 1961 Convention was a political act, not a scientific one.”
Underlying the review is a reckoning with the colonial assumptions that shape global drug control to this day. The 1950 WHO study that underpinned coca’s prohibition dismissed Indigenous practices as harmful and regressive, ignoring evidence of its benign cultural role. For many advocates, the current review is an overdue opportunity to correct that record. As Metaal argues, “This is not just about drug policy. It is about dignity, cultural survival, and Indigenous rights.”
Impending Change
For coca-using and growing communities, the implications are immediate. Continued criminalisation undermines cultural practices, justifies militarised eradication, and fuels human rights abuses. Removing the plant from international control could finally legitimise its traditional use, defund eradication policies, and unlock new economic opportunities grounded in heritage rather than prohibition.
As Walsh reflects: “In five years, I hope that we’re able to see a genuinely growing understanding of how natural coca products can really bring a lot of help to people around the world. I hope those markets can open up and can be beneficial to those communities that are most identified with coca.”
With the WHO’s deadlines fast approaching, the question is whether the international drug control system can rise to meet the moment—or whether it will once again fall back on outdated prejudices, leaving another generation of Indigenous peoples to fight for recognition of what they already know: that prohibition, not the coca leaf, is the problem.
