Coke Kills Environment

By Mark Steer

A noseful of jazz powder is bad for the environment a panel of scientists has said.

A meeting at the Natural History Museum in London has concluded that, no matter what you might think about the ethics of taking cocaine, it is causing serious environmental damage in the places where it is grown and manufactured.

The scientists claim that the environment takes a hit at every stage in the process of producing cocaine. Colombia is one of the world’s most biodiverse countries, yet every year, 100 thousand hectares of Colombian forest is destroyed to plant coca. These plantations, reports Barbara Axt in the Register, are then managed using tons of herbicides which have been outlawed in many other countries.

But that’s only the start of the story. To extract cocaine from the coca leaves, they must be soaked in solvents. Every year, 20 million litres of acetone, 13 million litres of gasoline and 81 thousand litres of sulphuric acid are used in this process and then thrown away, untreated, in rivers and water streams.

Unfortunately the Colombian government’s efforts to curb the trade aren’t helping either. Their current method of choice is to dump yet more herbicides to the coca plantations from planes. This has predictably crappy results for all the other plants, insects and amphibians in the surrounding area and simply forces the growers to move to another area of forest and start all over again.

So there we have it, yet another reason for Kate Moss to keep a wary eye out for Greenpeace activists. Furthermore, the Co-op have refused to comment on rumours that they’re planning to bring out FairTrade, environmentally friendly cocaine products as part of their Truly Irresistible range.

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