This blog is dedicated to helping to restore an awareness of the remarkable quality of life and health benefits of pure, natural Coca Leaf – primarily the leaf of the native Peruvian and Bolivian Coca plants.
Coca Leaf is the panacea referred to in the name of the blog. While humankind has been searching for a panacea that will cure all ills since before recorded history, none has ever been found. And I have to confess that Coca Leaf is not that level of a panacea either – but it comes very close. Closer, I would venture to say, than any other natural medicine ever given to people by the natural world, and certainly closer than all the ‘medicines’ invented by science.
It’s important to stress that Coca Leaf is not Cocaine, and this blog is not intended to suggest that Cocaine is in any way a natural medicine, nor does it have any of the incredible healing potential of natural Coca Leaf.
Let me illustrate what I mean. If I were writing a blog about the health benefits of drinking moderate amounts of red wine, that blog would not be about the health benefits of drinking pure grain alcohol. There are so many components in red wine besides the proportionally small amount of alcohol that to suggest that simply by extracting what an uninformed mind would consider the ‘key ingredient’, the same health benefits could be achieved.
In fact, as you will see as this blog progresses, it was precisely that kind of narrow-minded, commercially motivated thinking that extracted Cocaine and made it a “medicine” in the mid-nineteenth century on the part of a few German and American chemists, who went on to found what today we call “Big Pharma”. They extracted what they considered the “active ingredient” from the Coca Leaf and gave us what today is the family of Cocaine-based demons that have separated us from the broad and deep health-giving benefits of Coca Leaf, and ultimately did so simply in the name of unholy profits from deeply unethical conspiracies.
As this blog progresses I will document the progression of this historical dynamic, from the efforts of early chemists to extract a medically useful “active principal” from Coca, to the realization by early capitalists that while they could not control the market for Coca Leaf they could, and did, patent and control the market for medical Cocaine, to the inevitable situation where increasingly doctors and then their patients became habituated and then addicted to medical Cocaine, to the point where it became a “street drug” in the late 1800s, leading to a series of tyrannical criminalization laws demanded by moralistic religious fanatics, urged on by opportunistic politicians, trumpeted by a thrilled yellow journalism, abetted by an eager police establishment, and of course covertly but forcefully supported by the manufacturers of “pharmacological Cocaine”.
The health benefits of pure, natural Coca Leaf, usually taken as a simple tea, were thoroughly documented and tested through empirical research by generations of European and, later, American scientists and doctors throughout the 17th-19th centuries. An irrefutable historical record exists that testifies to the literally dozens of conditions and diseases that pure, natural Coca Leaf prevents, treats and cures. As this blog progresses I will address each of the conditions and diseases that the historical record demonstrates can be effectively and safely treated with simple Coca leaf tea. I will give you the evidence as I see it and provide you with active links to the historical literature where the documentation exists.
Furthermore, since many of today’s most destructive diseases did not exist during those centuries, I will discuss and point to the historical record that strongly suggests and in some cases – at least to my mind – conclusively proves that if pure, natural Coca Leaf were freely available today as a natural medicine it could life the immense burden of these conditions and diseases from tens of millions of people virtually overnight, with no “side effects”, no risk, and for literally pennies a day. Big Pharma isn’t going to like this one bit, nor will the medical industry. Freely available Coca Leaf would also literally destroy the market for useless, often even dangerous over-the-counter “remedies” – which, of course, would guarantee even more strident howls of objection and opposition.
Let’s consider how much we all spend, through our insurance premiums, taxes and ‘out-of-pocket” on some of the big ‘modern’ diseases and conditions. And while we’re doing this, let’s ask what if, as strongly indicated by empirical medical evidence from past centuries, we could very likely effectively address many if not most of these life-destroying diseases simply by drinking a few cups of Coca Leaf Tea every day.
Estimated Per-Year Direct Spending In US
Alzheimers/Dementia $203 Billion
Obesity/Overweight $270 Billion
ADHD $35-40 Billion
Depression $77 Billion
Rheumatism $19 Billion
Diabetes $245 Billion
Congestive Heart Failure $35 Billion
Ischemic Heart Disease $110 Billion
Gut Diseases $65 Billion
Pain $560 Billion
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease $45 Billion
Pneumonia/Lower Respiratory Disease $10-$15 Billion
Stroke $53 Billion
Hypertension $95 Billion
Well, some may say, the medicinal profession of the 18th and 19th centuries can hardly compare with the level of knowledge and expertise of contemporary medicine, let alone with the wonders produced by modern pharmaceuticals. To which I can only say – oh, really? Compared with the known efficacy and safety of Coca Leaf?
Consider the following items from enlightenamerica.com
1. A minimum of 100, 000 people die each year in the US from properly prescribed “medications”.
2. This death toll may be as high as even 200,000, which places deaths from prescribed drugs between the 4th and 6th leading cause of death in the United States, just behind heart disease, cancer and stroke.
3. While only approximately 15,000 people die each year from illegal street drugs, well over 100,000 are killed each year from medications.
4. And prescription drugs are only the tip of this lethal iceberg. The U.S. Food and Drug
Administration says there are about 300,000 over-the-counter properly prescribed drugs available.
This blog is dedicated to the central proposition that we have strayed – actually, that we have been deliberately and I might add very profitably led – too far from the natural way of life. I won’t romanticize the conditions under which people in the past lived back when the natural way was the only option – the pre-scientific, pre-technology, pre-industrial ages. Nor will I vilify the age in which we now live – there have been many legitimately beneficial advances in the quality of life for many people in the past hundred years or so. But advances in pharmaceuticals over what is known to be the healing qualities of pure Coca Leaf? All I can say is consider the evidence before you are too convinced that Big Pharma has answers that are superior to those offered by this one simple little leaf.
I will focus on presenting the historical evidence, and will strive to present accompanying reasoning and convincing arguments, that we have been separated from several areas of knowledge that are key to lost control over core quality of life issues, even while we are benefitting from and in many cases enjoying all that is good about the progress that has been made in science, technology, and even in some cases, medicine.
I will focus on this one seemingly small part of what has been lost – or, rather, what seems to have been deliberately hidden from us – which is the remarkable quality of life that is potentially available to every person, given free access to pure, natural Coca Leaf, without the egregious profits that now flow to the Corporate and Cartel greedheads ( no different from each other, really) who claw their way to the top of the world and from their lofty perches use their stolen wealth to wield power that keeps all below them in permanent spiritual and physical shackles.
Finally, this blog is dedicated to the proposition that there can be a successful restoration of the People’s right to grow or have grown for them, and to use pure, natural Coca Leaf in our daily lives, and that this restoration movement can be modeled after one of the great liberation movements of our times – the grass-roots campaign to restore the right of the People to grow, access and freely use Medical Marijuana.
But, I believe, the movement to restore the Coca plant should take on even greater urgency than the drive to restore Cannabis. Because for every single condition that Cannabis allows us to address with a natural plant free of the control of Big Pharma and Big Government, the Police state, the legal and illegal Corporate criminal syndicates, and the religious fanatics of the world, pure, natural Coca will prevent, treat and cure ten such conditions and diseases.
Both Cannabis and Coca are gifts of the Great Spirit to the People of the earth who suffer without relief, and who are oppressed without deliverance. But with profound respect for my courageous colleagues in the Medical Cannabis movement, I believe that they should now take the lessons they have learned, and the support that they have earned, and while continuing the fight to liberate Cannabis from the grip of tyranny, should embrace the absolute need to liberate the Coca plant from those same forces of oppression. The same models of production and distribution to patients apply, the same coalition of enlightened souls from all walks of life and all professions is needed, the same scientific and medical endorsements are required, and the same courageous legislators must be urged to take action. This movement need begin in only a few places and, just as with the Medical Cannabis movement, there should be safeguards in place to ensure that it is impossible for one individual or group to obtain enough Coca Leaf at one time to be able to extract Cocaine.
Here lies one major difference between Cannabis and Coca that should help to energize a campaign for liberation and quiet even the most strident voices of alarmed critics. While it is possible for opponents to argue with Cannabis that even one flower has the potential for abuse by an individual who has no medical need but simply seeks to get high, there is no such possibility with Coca Leaf, no matter how many cups of Coca tea an individual might drink in a day. There is ZERO possibility of addiction to Coca Leaf tea – beyond the sort of “addiction” so many people feel for their morning cup of coffee. This truth has been documented in hundreds of years of empirical studies – and this blog will give its readers full access to that data.
With that I will close this introduction to “Panacea Chronicles”. My plan is to post a new blog at least once weekly, and I will be monitoring your comments as frequently as possible, responding whenever it seems desirable. I will attempt to respond to email inquiries in a timely manner, and I will welcome participation in this blog by critics as well as supporters.
panaceachronicles 