Free The opening of this chapter, up to “1903: The Quiet Removal of Cocaine,” is free to read. Read it below ↓
In this chapter
- 1886: The Birth of a “Medicine” with Cocainethe original formula, how it was advertised, and how much cocaine it held
- 1903: The Quiet Removal of Cocainewhy and how the cocaine was taken out, and what replaced it
- After 1903cocaine’s prohibition in the United States, and Bolivia’s Coca Colla
- Peru and Bolivia: The Fight for Cultural HeritageMorales at the UN, and Bolivia’s exit from and return to the 1961 convention
- The Argument, Plainly Statedthe case for and against a legal international trade in the leaf
Questions this chapter answers
- Does Coca-Cola still use coca leaf today?
Yes: around a hundred tons a year, mostly Peruvian, arrive at a plant in Maywood, New Jersey; the cocaine goes to medicine and the spent leaf into the syrup.
- How much cocaine was in the original Coca-Cola?
About 8.5 mg a glass, by the historian Mark Pendergrast’s estimate.
- Why was the cocaine removed in 1903, and what replaced it?
- How did Bolivia change its obligations under the UN drug convention?
Short answers only. Chapter 10 gives the full account, with 10 footnotes to 11 sources.
Chapter 10: read it free
Coca-Cola never stopped using coca leaf. Around a hundred tons of it, mostly Peruvian, arrive every year at a plant in Maywood, New Jersey — the only facility in the United States licensed by the DEA to import and process the leaf, a job it has done for the company for over a century.1 There the alkaloid is stripped out and sold on to be made into surgical anesthetic for eye and nasal operations; the spent leaf goes into the syrup.
So the arrangement of 1903, when the company took the cocaine out of the drink but not the leaf, still stands: the cocaine goes to medicine, the flavor goes to the world, and the plant that was declared a menace is quietly unloaded at a New Jersey dock year after year.
1886: The Birth of a “Medicine” with Cocaine
When pharmacist John Pemberton created Coca-Cola, it was a tonic syrup named for two plants: coca leaf, the source of cocaine, and the kola nut, a source of caffeine. Its first advertisement, in 1886, called it “a valuable Brain Tonic and a cure for all nervous affections — Sick Head-Ache, Neuralgia, Hysteria, Melancholy, etc.” By the historian Mark Pendergrast’s estimate, a glass of the original drink held about 8.5 mg of cocaine — enough for a mild tonic effect.2
The rest of this chapter continues in the full book.
Notes
- Gootenberg, 2008, 199–201, on the arrangement; the tonnage from “Coca Kick in Drinks Spurs Export Fears,” 2004, quoting the spokesman of Peru’s state coca company. ↩
- Pendergrast, 2000, 30–31 for the advertisement and 53 for the estimate, made from a formula apparently in the hand of Pemberton’s partner Frank Robinson. ↩
Sources
10 footnotes to 11 sources. Full references are in the bibliography.
- Gootenberg, Paul. Andean Cocaine: The Making of a Global Drug. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008.
- “Coca Kick in Drinks Spurs Export Fears.” The Washington Times, April 19, 2004. washingtontimes.com/news/2004/apr/19/20040419-093635-4754r. Accessed October 4, 2026.
- Pendergrast, Mark. For God, Country, and Coca-Cola: The Definitive History of the Great American Soft Drink and the Company That Makes It. 2nd ed. New York: Basic Books, 2000.
- Elmore, Bartow J. Citizen Coke: The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism. New York: W. W. Norton, 2015.
- Harrison Narcotics Tax Act, Pub. L. No. 63-223, 38 Stat. 785 (1914).
- “Coca Colla Goes on Sale in Bolivia.” Drug War Chronicle, April 16, 2010.
- United Nations. “Bolivian President Evo Morales Addresses the Commission on Narcotic Drugs,” Vienna, March 11, 2009.
- Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961, as amended by the 1972 Protocol.
- United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. “Bolivia to Re-accede to UN Drug Convention, While Making Exception on Coca Leaf Chewing.” January 2013.
- Holmstedt, Bo, Jan-Erik Lindgren, Laurent Rivier and Timothy Plowman. “Cocaine in Blood of Coca Chewers.” Journal of Ethnopharmacology 1, no. 1 (1979): 69–78. DOI 10.1016/0378-8741(79)90017-5.
- Gagliano, Joseph A. Coca Prohibition in Peru: The Historical Debates. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1994.