Reviewing the coca leaf’s international status: A chance to heal what Prohibition broke

I approach this topic with humility. I am a white settler living on unceded Quw’utsun territory — in what is colonially known as Duncan, British Columbia — and check nearly every box on the wheel of privilege. So when I write about the intersections of drug policy, Indigenous rights and sovereignty, and the ongoing harms of colonization, I acknowledge both the limitations of my perspective and responsibility to act in solidarity.

On the trail of coca prohibition’s environmental and community devastation

I approach this topic with humility. I am a white settler living on unceded Quw’utsun territory — in what is colonially known as Duncan, British Columbia — and check nearly every box on the wheel of privilege. So when I write about the intersections of drug policy, Indigenous rights and sovereignty, and the ongoing harms of colonization, I acknowledge both the limitations of my perspective and responsibility to act in solidarity.

I’m currently a master’s student in justice studies, and over the past two years I’ve been deeply engaged in learning about the social and environmental impacts of prohibitionist drug policies. What first sparked this inquiry was a report from Health Poverty Action called Revealing the Missing Link to Climate Justice: Drug Policy— which examines how prohibition drives drug production and trafficking into ecologically sensitive areas, props up violent organized crime, and obstructs both climate and community stability.

That report led me to learn more about Colombia’s recent history—about communities resisting the return of aerial fumigation campaigns meant to destroy illicit coca crops. I read a 2019 open letter from Indigenous, Afro-descendant, rural, and civil society organizations urging the Colombian government to stop using glyphosate, a controversial herbicide sprayed from planes in efforts to eradicate coca. They described a pattern of triple deforestation: clearing forest to grow coca, having it fumigated, and then clearing even further into the forest to replant.

The deeper I went, the more connections I saw: between armed conflict and land degradation, between militarized “solutions” and displaced families, between drug war tactics and environmental collapse. The more I learned, the more it became clear: coca is not the enemy. It never was.

An opportunity to undo a broken policy of colonial erasure

In October 2025, the World Health Organization’s Expert Committee on Drug Dependence (ECDD) will consider its recommendations on the international control of the coca leaf, following a ‘critical review’ process. The ECDD will then formally present its recommendations to the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) — the primary intergovernmental drug-policymaking body of the UN — at its ‘reconvened’ session, in December of his year.

This review of the coca leaf’s status is a long-overdue opportunity to right a historical wrong. This isn’t just a niche policy debate. It’s a pivotal moment with global implications for environmental justice, Indigenous rights, and international drug policy.

The current system doesn’t work. Coca remains strictly prohibited, despite a growing number of exceptions at the national level. Bolivia has long defended coca as part of its national heritage, with over three million people consuming 19,000 metric tons of leaf annually. Argentina allows possession for personal use, and Colombia and Peru maintain legal cultivation systems for traditional and nutritional uses. These realities clash with outdated treaty obligations that still classify coca as a harmful drug.

Meanwhile, approximately 200,000 families in Colombia alone rely on coca cultivations for survival — many of them Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities living in regions historically impacted by armed conflict and displacement. Prohibition has criminalized their livelihoods, empowered organized crime, and hindered the development of legal, sustainable alternatives.

For decades, governments have waged war not only on the plant but on the Andean and Amazonian communities who have used it safely and respectfully for generations. The results are destroyed forests and biodiversity hotspots, displaced families, and a booming informal trade of derivatives, such as cocaine. The harms of prohibition are, as so often, not just ‘unintended’ side effects but predictable outcomes of policies built on punitive, racist, colonial logics.

The international community stands at a crossroads. And there are two futures ahead.

A choice between entrenchment or healing

In one future — the path we are currently on — governments opt to double down. The coca leaf stays on Schedule I. Communities continue to be displaced. Forests continue to fail. Militarized enforcement escalates. Organized crime flourishes. And despite it all, cocaine production and use continue to rise. It’s the same failed cycle we’ve been trapped in for decades.

There is another way forward, rooted in social justice, imagination and political courage.

In this future, the coca leaf is de-scheduled — acknowledging its benefits, ancestral uses, and untapped potential — and the differences between the plant and its chemically-processed and potent derivatives is made clear.

The concert of nations recognizes what the WHO’s suppressed ‘Cocaine Project’ found decades ago: that traditional coca use has no negative health effects and provides positive social, spiritual, and medicinal benefits. Indigenous leaders and nations are heard, after years of calling for the international system to stop obstructing culture in the name of law and order.

Indigenous communities are no longer punished for practicing their traditions. Currently-persecuted farmers grow coca openly and legally, using it for teas, flour, and natural remedies. States regulate cultivation and formalized supply chains, fostering innovation as well as reparations. The violence that once followed prohibition begins to wane as coca is brought into the light.

We can’t undo the past. But we can stop repeating it.

Removing coca from the most restrictive category in international drug control treaties wouldn’t legalize cocaine. It would simply allow countries the legal space to regulate coca for traditional, medicinal, and nutritional purposes. It would support sustainable development initiatives and reduce the power of illegal markets. And crucially, it would affirm Indigenous rights and cultural practices long undermined by colonial logic.

Legal coca markets already exist — in Bolivia, Peru, and beyond. They gesture towards beneficial modes of regulation. And, contrary to common fears, are unlikely to expand cocaine production. Cocaine requires extensive processing and resources; prohibiting the leaf hasn’t stopped its production — if anything, it’s enabled more harmful, unregulated methods.

This moment isn’t just a normative question but a matter of justice. It’s about healing. About ending the selective use of international law to suppress Indigenous knowledge and traditions.

The coca review process enables the international community to begin a process to decolonize a drug control system that was never built to serve the people most impacted by it.

We can choose healing.

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* This blog post is produced within the framework of Corey Ranger’s internship at the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC), as part of his MA in Justice Studies programme at Royal Roads University.