Coca is a plant with a complex array of mineral nutrients, essential oils, and varied compounds with greater or lesser pharmacological effects – one of which happens to be the alkaloid cocaine, which in its concentrated, synthesized form is a stimulant drug with possible addictive properties. Of all the plants introduced to the world by American Indian societies, few have been as controversial as the coca bush. Part of the Erythroxylum genus, the coca plant, whose leaves were first...
