this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2026
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I mean - I get all the jokes and everything, but wouldn't this democratization of coca generally be a good thing to the world? At least it might be good for countries that now have a problem with illegal coca production. I don't actually have enough info about that industry, but I would like to hear some opinions from people more familiar. Would the "democratization" of coca be a net benefit? Even if not legalized fully? Would it leech money from cartels/mafia?
The "cartels" (in reality extremely loosely related production and smuggling operations) are pretty much entirely a product of a combination of U.S. foreign and domestic policies, that serve to control money and drug flows within the Americas, providing the U.S. with convenient scapegoats to destabilize trust in governments that don't exactly toe the U.S. line by providing them with guns and money, while also allowing the U.S. to simultaneously tar states that try to exert control over these actors through their own means as 'narco-states'.
Unless these policies, both acknowledged and secretive, are dealt with, there is very little chance that any product brought to domestic market will have a real impact. Policies will simply be changed to continue these foreign and domestic policy objectives.
It's not as though coca is extremely difficult to grow in these tropical regions. It is an artificial scarcity problem already.
That makes sense. It would only work if scarcity is not artificial, but naturally limited resource. Sort of like how worst thing that could happen to a country is they find oil.
Correct.
The domestic policy aspect of this trade, particularly for cocaine, is mostly speculation on my part, cobbled together from both historical accounts, anecdotal evidence, and personal experience.
However, my personal hypothesis is that a byproduct of the cocaine trade being illegal domestically is that it technically serves the same purpose as Jeffrey Epstein did, binding together members of an elite class through shared usage and performance of, what would outside of that class, be an illegal activity. Kind of like how people used to smoke weed to prove they were cool, before everyone and their mother got high all the time.
Cocaine usage is rampant among the financial and governmental class, and being ghouls, they have the best and most pure shit. Having a hit of flour with some cocaine in it is completely different than having the shit near raw. Basically isn't even worth it in the Midwest anymore, especially with some fiend's insistence of cutting with fent. But it also speaks to a tightening of access and usage. There used to be enough cocaine around for crack (differently processed cocaine) to be epidemic, but that shit is not nearly as common, to my understanding.
Point is, the systemic policies and policy objectives are the issue, not anything from the production side.
There is already a plant that produces cocaine in it's leaves.
yeah but can i grow it at my latitude?