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Thoughts On Coca, Cannabis, Opium & Tobacco – Gifts Of The Great Spirit

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Why Bolivia & Peru Should Sue Merck & Coca Cola

Pizarro Kneels Before Mama Coca Just Before The Slaughter Of The Incas Begins

People of conscience rightfully condemn the Nazi looting of art and cultural artifacts from Jewish victims of the Holocaust, and from homes and museums around Europe. People also rightfully condemn the berserk destruction of cultural and historical treasures in Iraq and Afghanistan by ISIS and the Taliban.

There is a growing body of international law that condemns and demands reparations on the part of former colonial powers like Britain, France, Belgium and The Netherlands whose military and “explorers” looted cultural and historical treasures of Greece, Egypt, Iraq, India, Indonesia, Africa and elsewhere in their Empires. The Spanish are certainly near the top of any list of looters of cultural and historical artifacts with their centuries-long conquest and domination of the Indian civilizations of Latin America.

And of course it can hardly be disputed that the Americans top the list of looters with their genocide against Native Americans and blatant theft of their ancient homelands, along with widespread looting of their cultural and historical artifacts, desecration of their graves, and theft of their cultural heritage. When this history is combined with the destruction and enslavement of entire African civilizations, and the forced obliteration of not only whole families and tribes but whole histories, Americans are definitely at the top of any list of historical and cultural criminals.

All of the victims of these various exercises of colonial avarice, hatred and slaughter are at some stage in seeking reparations. The Greeks want their temples back from the British. The Egyptians want the bones and treasures of their ancient Kings returned. Native Americans are demanding the return of their sacred objects and the bones of their ancestors from the Smithsonian. The Iraqis who have seen their Mesopotamian heritage scattered to the winds for centuries are currently being victimized by a blow-dried reincarnation of Jim & Tammy Faye in the person of the “Christian” owners of the tacky little “Hobby Lobby” chain in the US that is charged with large-scale looting on ancient artifacts in the Middle East. These elaborately coiffed smiley-face Oklahomans of course deny everything, pleading that they had no idea that these little ole’ tiles were invaluable cultural artifacts.

Cultures worldwide are demanding the same of museums in France, Belgium and The Netherlands. The Chinese are demanding the return of cultural and historical treasures looted by the American-backed Chiang Kai Shek. American Black people are demanding reparations for the theft and brutalization of their families, cultures and history. Latin American cultures are demanding that Spain , Portugal and the Catholic Church return the wealth in gold, silver, culture and history stolen from them over the centuries of Colonial domination.

However, in the midst of all this worldwide outcry against theft of cultural and historical heritage by force and stealth, at least one enormous crime against Native People has been completely overlooked, and I am proposing that the people of Bolivia and Peru, who are the victims of this particular crime, organize and pursue legal remedy under the same body of international law that has begun to recognize the rights of other Native People worldwide.

The crime I am referring to is the theft of the Coca Plant by the European pharmaceutical industry that, since the 1840’s, has made hundreds of billions of dollars from the theft of this Sacred Plant of the Incas and has not paid one penny in reparation or shared any of the huge profits that this industry has enjoyed for over 150 years. Specifically, I am suggesting that Bolivia and Peru jointly sue the German Pharmaceutical company Merck, which was responsible for first looting Coca Plants from Bolivia and Peru and then extracting the alkaloid Cocaine from those plants, and then making Cocaine the core of the company’s fortunes as it grew into the globally dominant pharmaceutical giant of today.

The Coca Plant is indigenous to only one place in the world – the southern Andes – so Merck cannot claim that they took a plant that was readily available worldwide and simply exercised their scientific genius in producing Cocaine. The plants that Merck used to create mountains of gold from a few green leaves came from only one place, and were the cultural and historical heritage of only one People – the Native peoples who today live in poverty in Andes, remote from even a handful of the wealth so jealously guarded by the German pharmaceutical industry and others worldwide who profit from the cultural heritage of the Incas – companies like Coca Cola, who should also be named in any lawsuit for reparations brought by representatives of the Native People of Bolivia and Peru.

The art looted by the Nazis is being returned to the rightful owners under the law, and the families and descendants of those owners are rightfully being compensated. The stolen art, artifacts and bones of ancient civilizations in Greece, Egypt and elsewhere are gradually being pried loose from the talons of the museums erected by Colonial powers to display their loot. Even the American Smithsonian is finally, reluctantly recognizing that it has no right to make the corpses of Native Americans part of their “display”, and are, while doing a lot of foot-dragging, gradually returning the bones and cultural and historical loot stolen from the Native American people. And although there is enormous opposition among the elite and their toadies toward paying reparations to American Black people, at least there is some movement among American Black people themselves to reclaim parts of their stolen cultural and historical heritage.

So why shouldn’t Merck, Coca Cola and others that have profited from the theft of the heritage of the Incas be taken before the bar of international justice and stripped of at least a major portion of the profits that they have made from the theft of the cultural/historical heritage of the descendants of the Incas? The court of jurisdiction would also be responsible for assuring that the money recovered in the name of the descendants of the Incas was not re-looted by politicians in those countries, and instead went into a closely supervised non-profit international organization that was severely limited in the salaries it could pay and the administrative overhead it could charge.

I think that this is the right thing to do, and I think it should be done beginning now. Are you listening, President Morales? You have an historic opportunity to force the greedy capitalists of Merck, Coca Cola and other evil corporations to crawl on their knees dragging wagonloads of stolen wealth back to the people who are its rightful owners.

Just do it. Por favor.

 


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Coca Valley & The World Of Fools

CocaFlowersxThe Government of Peru is a major buyer of Coca Leaf in the Valley of the Apurimac-Ene-Mantaro Rivers, referred to in ever-charming government acronym style as “The VRAEM”. This Valley lies at the heart of the Andean mountain chain and could easily have been the model for Shangri-la. As it is, the Peruvian government, in league with the US Police State, has turned the Valley of the Apurimac-Ene-Mantaro Rivers into a war zone targeting peaceful Coca growers.

Interestingly the Peruvian government is also a major buyer of the Valley’s Coca Leaf, but the government buyers are well-known as cheapskates. That’s probably because – officially – government buyers and selected foreign buyers like Coca Cola are supposed to be the only buyers in the valley. They figure they’re doing the Coca growers a favor.

Of course, the Cocaine Cartels beg to differ with that, as do a substantial proportion of valley residents. And so there is no peace in the valley.

The Peruvian government owns and controls the non-Cocaine use of Coca Leaf through a monopoly named ENACO. This state-run company produces the official line of Coca tonics, medicines drinks and snacks for domestic consumption.

Peru’s politicians are in the Coca Leaf Remedios business because Coca Remedios are so deeply ingrained in Peruvian society that their use cannot be stopped – oh, and also because it’s a handy way to make some very nice revenue.

However, private entrepreneurs are not allowed to compete with the government monopoly, so Peruvian Coca Leaf products remain stuck with an incongruous “Soviet” look and excruciatingly ho-hum marketing. Too bad for Peru – Bolivian entrepreneurs and government officials are already making creative headway in the world markets for Coca Leaf and Coca Leaf medicines. (Pretty soon some country in Europe like the Netherlands or France is going to open up to Coca leaf entrepreneurs. The US is probably going to keep its Federal asshole puckered but one or two of the states ought to give Coca Leaf legalization a good hard look. )

Meanwhile, back in Coca Valley. At the same time that it low-balls the farmers’ Coca Leaf and makes cheesy Coca Leaf products, the Peruvian government wages war against any “extra” Coca growing by the people of Coca Valley. If they grow more than they are told to by the government, or if they refuse to sell to ENACO because of its ridiculous prices for their precious leaf, GOP burns and poisons their fields and makes their lives as miserable as possible. After all, their bottom-line motive is to satisfy the requirements of the US Police State that wants to be able to show the world that Peru is trying very, very hard to eradicate illicit Cocaine production. Very hard.

But Aha! Peru has come up with a plan! GOP wants the people of Coca Valley to grow only enough Coca to satisfy the government’s requirements, and then to convert to growing crops like bananas and cocoa – assisted of course by friendly “experts” from the US and UN.

Of course if you are a farmer in Coca Valley and your family has been growing Coca for generations and you don’t happen to like the chintzy prices the government is willing to pay, are you going to let the police rip out your Coca plants and make you start over with Bananas? Quite a few Coca Valley residents have not been pleased when approached by men with guns proposing this plan, and a few have gotten downright rowdy. Thrown rocks ‘n stuff. You know – terrorism.

Peru Cocaine Runways Photo GallerySo to complete the farce the Peruvian government declared the VRAEM a war zone a few years back, it ever since has been battling against the quickly shrinking remains of the once-powerful Shining Path rebels – as of late 2015 SL is down to under 100 guerillas, mostly old men and teenagers.

To go after this fearsome band the Peruvian government keeps sending in waves of troops, missiles and helicopters, while the US leaps in with space-based surveillance, military aircraft, dark ops and night raiders, chemical warfare assistance and high tech drones. All this firepower is arrayed against ragtag remnants of what was once a well-organized and very effective rebellion.

 

These survivors fight on, using the vast forests and jungles of the Coca Valley, an area the size of Switzerland, to hide in.

So this is the threat – a hundred tired rebels who are definitely at the end of their Shining Path. Can you imagine, a hundred guys getting together in the mountains almost anywhere else in the world and the central government spending $250 Million a year to try to get rid of the rebels and eradicate a few thousand hectares of croplands at the same time – and failing?

“The Peruvian government’s (2014) counternarcotics strategy includes ambitious goals for eradication, interdiction, and alternative development, and addresses associated issues such as the control of precursor chemicals, organized crime, money laundering, and the rule of law. The Humala Administration increased its counternarcotics budget from $220 million in 2012 to $256 million in 2013. For the first time, Peru contributed $11.6 million towards eradication efforts and concomitant aviation support, which historically has been funded by the United States.” US Department of State

OK, so the Peruvian government spends $256 Million of mostly US money a year to – what – combat terrorism and cocaine trafficking and deal with other related dangers to the children, like free speech?  And the US is right there helping out with money, technology, guns and manpower, just like the US was when the Fujimori government, funded by US foreign aid money, forcibly sterilized hundreds of thousands of Indian women in the 1980s in so-called “population control” programs.

Speaking of terrorism, let’s look at the terrorist activities of the Shining Path guerillas that are being used to justify all this government-initiated violence a little more closely.

So, how big a threat to the peace and tranquility of Peru is the Shining Path, actually? Here’s the US Department of State list of every one of the terrorist incidents involving the Shining Path in 2014. (Don’t worry – it isn’t a real long list)

      1. On April 9, Peruvian police arrested 28 leaders of the Movement for Amnesty and Fundamental Rights – a front organization that advocates for the release of imprisoned SL founder Abimael Guzman. Those arrested included two of Guzman’s long-time lawyers, Afredo Crespo and Manuel Fajardo. The 28 were charged with terrorism and terrorist financing using narcotics revenue. On August 4, the National Anti-Terrorism Court, citing lack of evidence, ordered that the 28 be released from pre-trail detention. Although the court ordered the detainees released, it did keep the charges intact so the trial can move forward.
      2. A May 16 clash between security forces and the SL in the Junin region left one SL guerilla dead and another wounded. The rest of the column was able to escape, but soldiers recovered weapons, ammunition, and communication equipment.
      3. On June 17, a combined Peruvian military and police force killed three SL terrorists in the VRAEM emergency zone. The joint patrol recovered a number of weapons, including a heavy machine gun that SL fighters reportedly stripped from a Russian-made Mi-17 helicopter they shot down in a 2009 attack that killed three soldiers.
      4. In August, security forces rescued six adults and three children from a work camp in the VRAEM used by SL to provide food and logistic support for its members.
      5. In August, police officers in the UHV arrested Oscar Silva, who is believed to have been the second-in-command to “Comrade Artemio,” who was captured in February 2012.
      6. In September, soldiers rescued 11 people, including six children, who were being forced to work for SL in Junin’s Satipo district.
      7. On November 2, security forces announced the arrest of Filemon Huillcayaure, considered one of the top financiers of SL in the VRAEM.

OK – there you are. That’s the Peruvian government’s 2014 body count in the US-sponsored War On Narco/Terror in Coca Valley. The totals include: 0 soldiers dead or wounded; 4 SL terrorists killed, 1 wounded; and 20 people including children rescued from slave labor for the Shining Path.

And that’s after a full year of running around this valley the size of Switzerland with thousands of troops, helicopters, attack jets, tanks, HumVees, guns and rockets, and the latest ground, air & space-based surveillance technology courtesy of the US. All this technology and manpower chasing approximately 100 Shining Path guerillas (now minus 4) as they shake down Coca growers, take pot shots at soldiers, hide in the jungle, enslave the occasional villager, and make Coca Base to generate an income.

So, now that we all know how well the “War On The Gang Of 100 Terrorists” is going – how about the “War On Coca Plants”?

Well, according to a 2014 roundup (sic) by the US Dept. of State, Bureau Of International Narcotics And Law Enforcement Affairs

“Peru remained the world’s top potential producer of cocaine for the third consecutive year, and was the second-largest cultivator of coca, with an estimated 50,500 hectares (ha) of coca under cultivation in 2012, the most recent year for which data is available. The majority of cocaine produced in Peru is transported to South American countries for domestic consumption, or for onward shipment to Europe, East Asia, and Mexico via private and commercial aircraft, and land and maritime conveyances. Peru is a major importer of precursor chemicals used for cocaine production.

“ President Ollanta Humala dedicated substantial resources to implement Peru’s 2012-2016 counternarcotics strategy. The strategy calls for a 200 percent increase in the eradication of illicit coca by 2016. The Government of Peru remains on pace to meet its ambitious targets in this area, and in 2013 eradicated in the Monzón River Valley, a hostile area with little state presence, for the first time in decades. Sendero Luminoso (SL or Shining Path) operating in the Apurimac-Ene-Mantaro River Valley (VRAEM) relied on cocaine trafficking for funding, and killed and wounded several police and military personnel during counternarcotics operations.”

Oops. It looks like even with hundreds of millions of dollars, armadas of military-scale technology, thousands of heavily armed soldiers and police, and humungous firepower applied year after year, you still can’t (or conveniently don’t want to) deal with 100 guerillas operating in an area the size of Switzerland, and at the same time in spite of this all-out War you also still have the distinction of being the world’s top potential producer of cocaine for the third consecutive year, and you were the second-largest cultivator of coca in 2014.

This whole US-promoted War On Drugs/War On Terror thing really isn’t working for you is it?

Respectfully, I have a suggestion to offer.

Peru has a world-class renewable natural resource in the Coca plant and the people who have grown it for centuries. Why not go with what you have instead of playing a losing game in return for Yankee dollars? Why not just tell the US to go home, make peace with the Cartels and let them make and export all the Cocaine they want as long as they pay taxes, work with the indigenous people to build a Coca Leaf-based economy throughout the country, build a health industry based on Coca Leaf treatment at spas scattered throughout the mountains, and allow private enterprise to apply the entrepreneurial spirit to development and global sales of Coca-based medicines?

Next, pay off Shining Path and let them go home for God’s sake – including those you are holding in prison. I imagine that $50-$100K per SL guerilla would do it – a total of $5-10 Million (one-time investment) to get the whole hundred of them to lay down their weapons, for which they receive amnesty and a piece of land to grow Coca. And the SL in prison who agree to go home and live peacefully ought to get the same deal.

So Government of Peru, instead of spending hundreds of millions every year on a couple of wars that are going nowhere and aren’t even yours, plus terrorizing whole communities of your People, why not lead the world and declare that Coca is a gift from nature and that the Peruvian government will no longer stand in the way of those who wish to make their living by growing and making products from it – including Cocaine. What the rest of the world thinks shouldn’t matter.

I mean, hey there, government of Peru – don’t you have better things to do than chase 100 members of the Gang Who Can’t Shoot Straight, a bunch of peaceful Coca growers, and gangs of very determined Cocaine makers? Didn’t that US-sponsored clown Fujimori bring down enough evil on Peru to make the government finally decide to work for rather than against the People? If everybody’s happy in Coca Valley who cares what the US thinks?

It can happen. The US isn’t so tough anymore. Just ask your neighbors in Bolivia.


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Does This Seem Familiar?

Do these two 19th Century French aperitif labels remind you of anything familiar?

CocaGraphic15x
Like perhaps beautiful young people dancing among flowers on hillsides singing about  “The Real Thing”?

Happy 2016 – Really


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Coca Cola Don’t Need No Cocaine – They Got Sugar, Sugar!

Sugar Sugar by The Archies (I identify with the dog.)

In my last post I speculated on how Coca Cola had managed the transition from being able to addict its customers with Cocaine to finding another way to create addicted customers after Cocaine became illegal. It turns out that a heavy dose of sugar (or Saccharine, or especially High Fructose Corn Syrup) does the trick quite well. In fact, lab animals have been shown to PREFER sugar to Cocaine, as you’ll see in the research article below. So all that the Coca Cola Company had to do was to load its products with extraordinary amounts of sugar – far beyond what it would take to simply sweeten a drink – and they were able to achieve the same results – consumer addiction – as they previously had with Cocaine. Pure evil genius.
EarlyCokeDealer
Also, one of my points in that last post was that I think it’s very likely that the Coca Cola Company has also been creating bio-engineered chemicals similar to the “Smoker Satisfaction Chemicals” used by the cigarette industry to ensure brand loyalty among smokers. I still think that is probably the case, although we’ll probably never know.

However, since it turns out that Sugar does the addiction trick so well, those exotic chemicals may be reserved for the Coca Cola Company brands like “Zero” that don’t depend on sugar for their addictive properties. After all if a business model based on consumer addiction has gained you top dog status in the global corporate hierarchy, and if diet fads prompt you to introduce new brands that are “sugar-free”, you’re not going to abandon that gloriously profitable business model, right? So if you’re not using sugar you have to addict your diet-conscious customer some other way. I mean, why abandon a business model that has worked for over 100 years just to pursue a new market segment?

Sugar-free, but still addictive. Better business through chemistry.
CCFleet
Am I another natural food nut going crazy over a little harmless sweetener in Coca Cola whether its sugar, or saccharine, or some bio-engineered substance that nobody has ever heard of? I admit it, I am pretty much of a natural food nut, but after you check out the research paper and the NY Times Op Ed quote below, then tell me that Coca Cola isn’t as addictive today as it was when it was a Cocaine cocktail in 1900.

PLoS ONE. 2007; 2(8): e698.
Published online Aug 1, 2007. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0000698
PMCID: PMC1931610

Intense Sweetness Surpasses Cocaine Reward
Magalie Lenoir, Fuschia Serre, Lauriane Cantin, and Serge H. Ahmed

Background

Refined sugars (e.g., sucrose, fructose) were absent in the diet of most people until very recently in human history. Today overconsumption of diets rich in sugars contributes together with other factors to drive the current obesity epidemic. Overconsumption of sugar-dense foods or beverages is initially motivated by the pleasure of sweet taste and is often compared to drug addiction. Though there are many biological commonalities between sweetened diets and drugs of abuse, the addictive potential of the former relative to the latter is currently unknown.

Methodology/Principal findings

Here we report that when rats were allowed to choose mutually-exclusively between water sweetened with saccharin–an intense calorie-free sweetener–and intravenous cocaine–a highly addictive and harmful substance–the large majority of animals (94%) preferred the sweet taste of saccharin. The preference for saccharin was not attributable to its unnatural ability to induce sweetness without calories because the same preference was also observed with sucrose, a natural sugar. Finally, the preference for saccharin was not surmountable by increasing doses of cocaine and was observed despite either cocaine intoxication, sensitization or intake escalation–the latter being a hallmark of drug addiction.

Conclusions

Our findings clearly demonstrate that intense sweetness can surpass cocaine reward, even in drug-sensitized and -addicted individuals. We speculate that the addictive potential of intense sweetness results from an inborn hypersensitivity to sweet tastants. In most mammals, including rats and humans, sweet receptors evolved in ancestral environments poor in sugars and are thus not adapted to high concentrations of sweet tastants. The supranormal stimulation of these receptors by sugar-rich diets, such as those now widely available in modern societies, would generate a supranormal reward signal in the brain, with the potential to override self-control mechanisms and thus to lead to addiction.

NY Times, Dec. 22, 2014
Sugar Season. It’s Everywhere, and Addictive.

By James J. DiNicolantonio And Sean C. Lucan,
(Excerpt from the original article) “Sugar stimulates brain pathways just as an opioid (sic) would, and sugar has been found to be habit-forming in people. Cravings induced by sugar are comparable to those induced by addictive drugs like cocaine and nicotine. And although other food components may also be pleasurable, sugar may be uniquely addictive in the food world. For instance, functional M.R.I. tests involving milkshakes demonstrate that it’s the sugar, not the fat, that people crave. Sugar is added to foods by an industry whose goal is to engineer products to be as irresistible and addictive as possible. How can we kick this habit? One route is to make foods and drinks with added sugar more expensive, through higher taxes. Another would be to remove sugar-sweetened beverages from places like schools and hospitals or to regulate sugar-added products just as we do alcohol and tobacco, for instance, by putting restrictions on advertising and by slapping on warning labels.”

Of course very little of this information about Sugar is new. My old friend Bill Dufty, who died in 2002, wrote what was the definitive book of its time entitled “Sugar Blues”. Bill was the husband of Gloria Swanson, the cinematic superstar who risked ridicule by being among the first to publicly condemn the industrial food and drink industry that was picking up steam in the 1950s. The powerful industrial food, tobacco and Pig Pharma industries even then virtually owned the media and whenever anyone stuck their head up to speak truth to their power they unleashed a hoard of lapdogs in white coats to condemn such a person as a pathetic do-gooder who knows nothing of real science and medicine.

Those of us who know better now have the platform of the Internet available as a tool for countering the massive power of these life-crushing industries. We understand the explicit evil behind the non-stop manipulative advertising and “news” that these industries inflict on the brainwashed public, not to mention their carefully designed and tested products that addict, sicken and ultimately kill hundreds of millions of people worldwide while generating the maximum per-unit profit and also while addicting new generations of children to step into the market as their parents and grandparents are falling dead.
CCBristol
Even though we have the marvelous internet as a forum it may simply be too late – too many people too well brainwashed and rendered stupid at a level that can’t be fixed. When I read interviews with people lined up outside theaters to see “The Interview” who say they are standing up for freedom by doing so, I have to close my eyes and count very slowly to ten before I can resume work with even the most vague hope that my work will make a positive difference in this dumbed-down world.

That said, dear reader, thank you for staying with me through what I know sometimes seems like a rant. I do try to keep it toned down but every once in a while my rage against the machine just can’t be contained.


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Coca Cola Classic Is An Excellent Solvent For Uranium

Readers of PanaceaChronicles are already familiar with the fact that today’s Coca Cola is the evolved version of a cocaine-based “tonic” that was extremely popular in the late 1800’s, and are probably also aware that even today the Coca Cola company has (very clandestine) US Government permission to import and process thousands of tons of Coca Leaf for use in the manufacture of it’s Cola products.

VintageCokeAd

So far, so good. My only real objections here are that I wish that somebody (preferably not this rapacious ‘soft drink’ company) were still producing a Coca Leaf-based tonic for medicinal purposes, and I think that if it’s legal for the giant Coca Cola company to import Coca Leaf then any US citizen ought to be able to do the same thing – no questions asked.

Well, I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for that to happen. And that isn’t what this post is about anyway.

The genesis of this post is an experience I had in the Third Grade. My science teacher, Mr. Norris, was well-known around the school as what everybody mockingly called a “health nut”. Little did any of us know that he was actually a true Pioneer.

He wouldn’t eat the government cheese and hot dogs in the cafeteria and actually brought his own lunch to school instead – a salad, if you can imagine that! He also didn’t drink coffee or milk – just water. This was 1950 – he’s lucky he didn’t get labeled a Commie and investigated by that raging asshole Joe McCarthy.

The other thing that Mr. Norris was absolutely over the top about was anything fizzy in a bottle – Coca Cola, Dr. Pepper, Pepsi Cola, etc. At some point after one of his tirades on this particular subject Mr. Norris asked that anyone with a younger brother or sister who was losing their baby teeth to bring one of those teeth to school – and he promised he would give them a quarter to slip under the little kid’s pillow.

The next day somebody brought in a tooth and with a great deal of fanfare Mr. Norris opened a bottle of Coke, poured it into a glass, and plunked the tooth into the glass. Then he set it on his desk and told the class to watch carefully because within a couple of days the tooth would be dissolved. (Then he poured the rest of the Coca Cola down the drain of the lab sink commenting that it would do wonders cleaning out the drain.) Sure enough, in a couple of days all that was left at the bottom of the glass was a little pile of grit.

Wow! We were all impressed. But my guess is that all the other kids were just like me – while Mr. Norris’s demo was supposed to make us all swear off Coca Cola immediately and forever, it took me at least another 30 years or so before I realized that old Mr. Norris had some good advice there, and since my mid-40s I have never had another so-called “soft drink”. Well, maybe a Rum & Coke or two, but other than that I have been a complete Cola abstainer.

So imagine my immediate interest as I was browsing through some relatively obscure publications online a few days ago when I came across the following absolutely stunning piece of research. If only Mr. Norris had known about this he could have done an even more impressive demo for us – one that might have had a greater impact than dissolving a baby tooth before our eyes.

It turns out that Coca Cola Classic is better than any of the powerful, toxic industrial solvents used in the mining industry for extracting such things as arsenic, copper, lanthanum, manganese, nickel, yttrium and zinc, and – wait for it – URANIUM from mined ore. Uranium!

UraniumMine

So, if Coca Cola is the best solvent in the world for extracting these toxic metals from solid rock, don’t you have to wonder what it does as it flushes through the human gut? And if that’s the case, how come we haven’t heard a peep out of the US Surgeon General, the Centers for Disease Control, or even Ralph Nader for Christ’s sake! All those people up in arms over second-hand smoke really ought to think this one through. Or could it be that the Coca Cola Company has all these guardians of the public health and welfare under its economic and political thumb?

Maybe so, maybe not. But if there’s another good explanation why this research has never, to my knowledge, gone beyond its publication in an obscure Australian mining journal I would love to hear it.

So, here’s an abstract of the research. Unfortunately the publisher wants over $40 for you to be able to read the full research article, but what is here is enough for me. I am so impressed that I will never have even a Rum and Coke again. And please believe me – that is impressed!

Sci Total Environ. 2011 Aug 15;409(18):3512-9. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2011.05.043. Epub 2011 Jun 22.

Cola soft drinks for evaluating the bioaccessibility of uranium in contaminated mine soils.

Lottermoser B.G., Schnug E., Haneklaus S.; School of Earth Sciences, University of Tasmania, Private Bag 79, Hobart, Tasmania 7001, Australia.

Bernd.Lottermoser@utas.edu.au

Abstract

There is a rising need for scientifically sound and quantitative as well as simple, rapid, cheap and readily available soil testing procedures. The purpose of this study was to explore selected soft drinks (Coca-Cola Classic®, Diet Coke®, Coke Zero®) as indicators of bioaccessible uranium and other trace elements (As, Ce, Cu, La, Mn, Ni, Pb, Th, Y, Zn) in contaminated soils of the Mary Kathleen uranium mine site, Australia.

Data of single extraction tests using Coca-Cola Classic®, Diet Coke® and Coke Zero® demonstrate that extractable arsenic, copper, lanthanum, manganese, nickel, yttrium and zinc concentrations correlate significantly with DTPA- and CaCl₂-extractable metals. Moreover, the correlation between DTPA-extractable uranium and that extracted using Coca-Cola Classic® is close to unity (+0.98), with reduced correlations for Diet Coke® (+0.66) and Coke Zero® (+0.55).

Also, Coca-Cola Classic® extracts uranium concentrations near identical to DTPA, whereas distinctly higher uranium fractions were extracted using Diet Coke® and Coke Zero®. Results of this study demonstrate that the use of Coca-Cola Classic® in single extraction tests provided an excellent indication of bioaccessible uranium in the analysed soils and of uranium uptake into leaves and stems of the Sodom apple (Calotropis procera).

Moreover, the unconventional reagent is superior in terms of availability, costs, preparation and disposal compared to traditional chemicals. Contaminated site assessments and rehabilitation of uranium mine sites require a solid understanding of the chemical speciation of environmentally significant elements for estimating their translocation in soils and plant uptake.

Therefore, Cola soft drinks have potential applications in single extraction tests of uranium contaminated soils and may be used for environmental impact assessments of uranium mine sites, nuclear fuel processing plants and waste storage and disposal facilities.
Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Maybe TEPCO ought to dump a few tons of Coke Classic on Fukushima Dai Ichi #3 and see what happens.