La desclasificación de la hoja de coca es un acto de justicia largamente pospuesto – Declaración del IDPC ante la 48ª reunión del Comité de Expertos de la OMS sobre la Dependencia de Drogas

El IDPC instó a los expertos a poner fin a una injusticia colonial, pidiendo que la hoja de coca sea desclasificada y que se reconozcan plenamente las tradiciones y los derechos de los pueblos indígenas. Más información, en inglés, está disponible abajo.

Statement delivered at the public information session of the 48th meeting of the Expert Committee on Drug Dependence of the World Health Organization (WHO)

Good morning to you all, my name is Marie Nougier, I am representing the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC), and my statement will relate to the critical review of the coca leaf.

IDPC is a global network of over 190 civil society and community organisations that come together to promote drug policies grounded in social justice and human rights.

IDPC welcomes the fact that the Critical Review Report highlights the various health benefits of the coca leaf – while concluding that the plant does not pose harmful risks to health. Nonetheless, in this intervention, we wish to highlight four areas of concern in relation to the Report’s findings, with the hope that these might be addressed in the final version of the Report.

Firstly, the Report overlooks the ancestral and cultural significance of the coca leaf. The coca leaf has been cultivated and used for traditional, nutritional, religious and medicinal purposes for millennia by Indigenous Peoples from the Andean-Amazonian region. The inclusion of the plant in Schedule I of the 1961 Convention was a historical error, grounded in racist and colonial arguments. This has led many traditional coca growers, users, Indigenous representatives and civil society organisations to call for the removal of the plant from the 1961 Convention.

Secondly, the Report does not give due attention to other traditional and industrial uses of the plant. Coca use has now spread among the general population and geographically into the northern Andes, the Western Amazon Basin, Chile and Argentina, for a wide range of cultural and traditional purposes, including in religious ceremonies, for its medicinal properties, as a nutritional supplement, as an aid to collective exchange and discussions, and as a stimulant for work. This should be reflected in the Critical Review Report.

Thirdly, little attention is given to the health and human rights impacts of punitive policies in coca cultivation areas. Today, thousands of families depend on coca cultivation for survival. Forced eradication campaigns, especially in fragile ecosystems and Indigenous lands, have caused devastating harms for affected communities’ rights to safe water, to food security, to health, and to a healthy environment. Forced eradication, weak land tenure rights, and failed alternative development programmes have led to the displacement of coca growing communities to more remote areas, exacerbating poverty and marginalisation. In 2025, 20 UN Human Rights mechanisms commended this critical review as an important step towards aligning international drug policy with the rights and traditions of Indigenous Peoples and to prevent the release of toxic chemicals into the environment.

Fourth, while cocaine can be extracted from the coca leaf relatively easily from large quantities near cultivation sites, the same would not apply to retail legal markets for products like coca tea. It is neither practical nor profitable to seek to extract cocaine from coca tea products. In addition, the Report seems to provide its own conclusion regarding its ‘ease of convertibility’ into cocaine. Ease of extraction does not equate to ease of conversion – especially for products derived from the coca leaf. Furthermore, it is important to recall that were the coca leaf removed from the 1961 Convention, the cultivation of coca for the illegal production of cocaine, or any diversion to the illegal market, would remain illegal. States parties would therefore continue to be bound by their obligations under article 26 of the 1961 Single Convention, and article 3.1 of the 1988 Convention.

Based on these considerations, we call on the ECDD to recommend the full de-scheduling of the coca leaf in its natural form from the international drug control system.

Thank you very much for your attention and I wish you a fruitful session.