And if Coca Leaves Had Come Across First?

A European man smokes a
tobacco pipe around 1595.
(Drawing by Anthony Chute,
via Wikipedia)

During his voyages of discovery to the Americas, Christopher Columbus's men discovered a novel plant, whose leaves produced a pleasant effect when placed in a pipe and smoked. Soon after, some "were unable to cease using it," reported Spanish Bishop Las Casas. And only a few decades later, tobacco was developing a booming market across Europe.

Chocolate's story is similar: Discovered by the Europeans about 1520, by the early 1600s chocolate drinks sweetened with sugar were becoming popular across Europe.

Workers in the Dutch colony of Java stamp
coca leaves in the early 1900s.
(Image: Wikipedia)

However, a third New World plant with addictive properties caught on more slowly. Carried to Europe in the 1500s, coca and its derivatives didn't become popular in the Old World and United States until the 1800s, when products such as coca wine and cocaine-containing medicines were marketed.

Chocolate drinking, portrayed
by by Philippe Sylvestre
Dufour, 1685.
(Image from Wikipedia)

Today, of course, chocolate and tobacco are both deeply embedded in Western culture, despite the tobacco leaf's severe health effects. Many governments are campaigning against tobacco use, with irregular results. But because of the leaf's addictiveness, cultural role and huge economic power, none will ever completely eliminate it.

All of which makes me wonder: What if cocaine had been exported and popularized first? Was it only a matter of geographic chance that chocolate and tobacco became Western cultural icons, while coca and cocaine become demonized? After all, even coca leaves, which produce no more than a mild narcotic effect when chewed, are on the United Nations' list of banned substances, right along with heroin.

Sure, cocaine's effects on human behavior can be much more intense than that of nicotine and caffeine, the active ingredients in tobacco and chocolate, respectively. However, "research suggests that nicotine is as addictive as heroin, cocaine, or alcohol," according to the United States Centers for Disease Control. And, it'd be easy to argue that tobacco can do you more harm than cocaine can.

Perhaps if columbus had carried coca leaves home in 1505, but tobacco leaves hadn't made it across the ocean until the 1600s, today we'd be sipping coca wine with supper, while tobacco cigarettes would be back-alley contraband. Perhaps.

Coca wine, from DrugLibrary.org

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

What - Me Advertise?

Not advertising? A young boy mans a sidewalk sales stand offering candies and cigarettes, which are featured in a slick display ad.

Why did this street vendor open these cigarette cartons?
How else could she sell smokes by the stick?

The Marlboro Men are dying off, many killed by the cigarettes they marketed; Michael Schumacher's days of being a tobacco billboard are over; and even Colombia has banned tobacco advertising and the practice of selling cigarettes by the stick - which makes it easy for kids to start smoking.

So, with today's headlines reporting that the world's cancer deaths will double - and many of those from tobacco in developing nations like Colombia - why doesn't Colombia bother to enforce its own tobacco control laws?

Yesterday's El Tiempo:
 'World cancer cases to double in 20 years.'

Colombia's tobacco control law prohibited tobacco advertising - but included a loophole large enough to drive a display ad thru. The law excepted displays for cigarettes and for the tobacco merchants, the line between display and advertisement is evidently an easy one to cross over.

The law also prohibited the sale of cigarettes 'by the stick,' or as 'loosies.' That part has simply been ignored, by both street vendors and the police. For proof, just take a look at any street vendor, whose open cigarette boxes are next to candies - convenient for teenagers who have only a few hundred pesos in their pockets.

What, me advertise?

Police could easily combat this practice with sting operations - have kids try to buy cigarettes, and confisticate the cigarettes from any vendor who sells to them. But the police just don't bother.

Today, someone observed to me, borrowing from Noam Chomsky, that tobacco kills far more people and is far more addictive than is cocaine. But, while the US finances coca leaf erradication in Colombia, it has, at least in the past, helped the tobacco industry. For that matter, many Colombian cigarettes are made and marketed by U.S. companies.

A vendor advertises cigarettes and sells loosies near the entrance to the Universidad del Rosario, in La Candelaria.

A street vendor in central Bogotá sells cigarettes by the stick. 

Sensual smoking in Shakira's latest video. The singer has a foundation for poor kids, but perhaps their health isn't so important. 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

When Cigarette Ads are not Ads

Cigarette advertising is not advertising...

To the long list of laws which are worth little more than the paper they're written on we can add the tobacco control law passed in 2009.

...when the cigarette company says it isn't.

I thot of this when I noticed the proliferation of these cigarette advertising displays in many stores. I guess that the cigarette makers have forgotten that the law prohibits all advertising. After the law went into effect last year, cigarette ads did come down in many stores - but the tobacco companies found a way to put them back up, by pretending that all they are are cigarette display cases. The people supposed to enforce the health laws apparently operate under the same delusion.

The owner of one of these stores told me that the law prohibited them from displaying the actual cigarette boxes they're selling in view of customers, which presumably is to keep them out of sight of young people. I pointed out that this law hasn't been enforced at all against the street vendors, who also continue selling loose smokes, which is also prohibited, including to children.

"The law is only applied to us," the storeowner said, "the ones who pay taxes." He's correct.

A street vendor sells loose cigarettes, illegaly,
on Plaza San Victorino

This isn't to say that the law's not a good thing. Tobacco advertising has been eliminated from the radio, and, I presume, from television (I don't have one, so can't say for sure). And the prohibition against indoor smoking is mostly respected, at least in Bogotá. The new health warnings on packs are also graphic and dramatic. (However, these new ads-which-are-not-ads do not carry health warnings, since they're not ads.)

But smoking remains epidemic, particularly among young people, who easily buy tobacco, which kills some 22,000 Colombians every year. Tragically, that death rate, which far exceeds the number killed in the country's armed conflict, is likely to increase.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Newsflash: Colombia Will Not Fumigate Tobacco!

Tobacco plants wait for harvest
 - and for erradication planes?

Colombia has rejected a World Health Organization plan to limit tobacco farmland in order to reduce tobacco consumption, El Tiempo reports.

Fighting tobacco use is of course fundamental for protecting public health. I recently read about a study which found that, after smoking was prohibited in the workplace, heart attacks dropped 33%! Can you imagine a greater benefit for public health, particularly when second-hand smoke seriously damages the health of non-smokers.

But trying to limit tobacco farming suggests troubling parallels to another less-than-successful anti-drug campaign: the one against coca leaf and cocaine. As Colombia has aggressively erradicated coca leaf acreage, they've just planted more in Peru and Bolivia.

Sure, like cocaine production, tobacco processing is band for the environment (just as tobacco use is bad for people). But helicopters fumigating excess tobacco fields and tobacco farmers responding by chopping down forest to plant illicit tobacco fields would be even worse. Soon after, I imagine, illegally-grown tobacco will be smuggled across the border into Venezuela and loaded onto small planes for illicit flights overseas. Sound familiar?

Rather, the best policy is to discourage tobacco use, as many WHO-promoted policies aim to do. Unfortunately, except for restricting indoor smoking and tobacco advertising, Colombia hasn't bothered to enforce its anti-tobacco laws (at least in Bogotá). Children can still easily buy cigarettes and street vendors openly and illegaly sell cigarettes by the stick. Both crimes could be controlled with sting operations, but the police don't bother. I've also seen large cigarette displays in stores which violate the spirit of the new anti-tobacco law, if perhaps not its letter.

Another disturbing thing noted in El Tiempo's article is Minister of Agriculture Juan Camilo Restrepo's argument that, even if it wanted to, Colombia could not limit tobacco production because of obligations assumed in its free trade agreements. Of course, this is really just an excuse to earn money: Colombia's FTA with the United States allows it to export 4,200 metric tons annually of the stuff. (Keep that in mind you anti-drug warriors.)

But, taking the minister at his word, is it really possible that Colombia's free trade agreements prevent it from protecting its people's health? That's unthinkable - or should be.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

A New Drug Law For Colombia?

Smoking on a streetcorner: soon to be banned in Colombia?

Colombian legislators have presented a new proposed drug policy law - and then withdrawn it for modification - probably because they realized that it wouldn't work.

The proposed law did not, however, propose courageous changes which might contribute to a shift in drug control strategies.

The proposed law had positives: for example, it would cover both legal and illegal drugs, instead of insisting on the lie that there are two categories of psychoactive substances: those that are legal and good and others which are bad and deserve prohibition.

Just don't breath if you're behind me. 

The law's prohibition against smoking on public streets, plazas and parques would be great - I hate walking down a sidewalk and choking on the second-hand smoke of someone in front of me (who often isn't even smoking his own cigarrette). Holding your breath in Bogotá's thin air, you rush past them - only to have to swallow the smoke of someone else ten feet ahead. But if the legislators really believe that this law's enforceable, they must have been smoking something lots stronger than tobacco.

The proposed law would also have banned alcohol advertising at cultural and sporting events. Inebriation certainly causes lots of damage in Colombia, including sports-related violence - but alcohol also funds lots of activities and plays an important role in Colombian culture. Lots of people enjoy drinking without harming others. Where is the best balance between puritanism, prohibitionism and healthy recreation?

A giant Aguila beer shirt at a football game. Some Colombian teams are in bankruptcy. Would the sport survive without alcohol money?

Fans fight at a football game: much of it is fueled by alcohol. 

On the positive side, the proposal would require coca leaf erradicators to ask for permission before working in indigenous territories. The law would also designate areas for cultivating drug crops for legal consumption - does this mean that Colombia's going to enter into medical marijuana production? Or would it further regulate the legal production of products from coca leaf?

Coca tea and leaves: headed toward more regulation?

Regarding illegal drugs, the law would provide more treatment for drug addicts and create a task force charged with reducing drug use. That's a step forward, since reducing demand has been shown to be much more cost-effective, as well as more humane. But the law also appears to increase regulation on the cultivation of drug crops on indigenous territories. That may be a step backward, if it prevents indigenous people from producing healthy products such as coca tea, crackers and soft drinks, which provide these peoples with alternatives to the illegal drug economy.

But the proposed law did not take even baby steps toward decriminalizing illegal drugs, even tho criminal groups financed by illegal drugs have done more damage to Colombia than perhaps any other nation. Legislators might consider decriminalizing personal use of marijuana or even restate the old personal dosis of drugs. This would surely bring complaints from Republicans in Washington - but would also assert Colombia's independence from U.S. drug policy.

Colombian ex-president Cesar Gaviria has been campaigning for drug decriminalization for a while, and participated in the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, which also recommended alternatives to prohibitionism. And Pres. Juan Manuel Santos has said that he'd be open to changes on drug policy - if other nations take the lead. He's right. If Colombia did the unthinkable and legalized drugs it could deprive the guerrillas, paramilitaries and cartels of the bulk of their incomes - but would also turn this country into an international pariah.

Colombia has no choice but to wait for Washington to take the lead. But expecting Washington to endorse decriminalization anytime soon is unfortunately reefer madness.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

An End to Loosies?

Opened cigarette boxes offer 'loosies' along Ave. Jimenez.

Update: As of November, nothing's changed in the sale of loose cigarettes. A street vendor, after selling a pair of loosies to a young couple, says 'Well, we can't die of hunger,' and points out that the vendor earns much more by selling cigarettes by the stick than by the box. She pointed out that neighboring liquor stores also sold alcohol illegally to minors. When the police come by, they hide the open boxes, she said. The only way to end this practice is with sting operations.

On Thursday, a law took effect prohibiting all cigarette advertising and, more controversally, the sale of 'loosies' or single cigarettes.

Most of the public commentary I've heard about the 'loosies' prohibition has been negative: it will hurt the incomes of the informal vendors and small shopkeepers who sell single cigarettes; by making full packs the only option, smokers will smoke nor, not less; the law is unenforceable.

Building a future market: tobacco company contractors
interview young people about their smoking habits
in La Candelaria, a university neighborhood.

The first two criticisms miss the point. Yes, an end to loose cigarette sales will cut vendors' incomes. But, if vendors' incomes were the top priority, then we should give them license to sell heroin, cocaine and pornography to anybody who wants them, as well. On the second, I doubt whether, on balance, many people would smoke more without loosies, but this law's goal is not to affect adult smokers, who have a right to continue their habit. Access to cheap, single cigarettes, which can be bought on the street starting at about 150 pesos, or a dime, gets lots of kids started smoking and starts them on a lifelong addiction. If they had to shell out for a whole pack, they might buy a candy instead - or even save their coins.

A lifelong market? young person smokes on La Plaza del Chorro. 

On the other hand, critics are right that this law will likely not be enforced, altho it could be. A local shopkeeper tells me that cigarettes sell for about one-third more when vended singly than when sold by the pack. That gives vendors a big economic incentive to open cigarette packs and sell the sticks one by one. 

Expect shopkeepers to keep their opened packs under the counter. If police or health authorities question them, they'll just explain that those ten opened packs are the ones they are smoking themselves.

In a neighborhood shop. This space
had contained a cigarette ad. 

The only way to catch single-stick sellers would be with sting operations: employing people to try to buy single cigarettes. But Colombian police don't use such strategies.

The tobacco companies have removed lots of the cigarette advertising which has papered this city. But they haven't given up on their battle on young Colombians' hearts and lungs. This afternoon, I watched young people interviewing other young people about their smoking and cigarette buying habits. They appear to focus only on young men and women - after all, that's tobacco's future market.

A Marlboro sign on a city bus. 

The warning says 'Smoking causes abortion.' If abortion is mostly prohibited, then why is smoking permitted?

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Riding for the Right to Pollute

Two-stoke moto protesters (Photo from El Tiempo). The man's t-shirt says 'My whole family rides a motorcycle.'

Today, some one hundred two-stroke motorcycle riders rode from Simon Bolívar Park to Plaza Bolívar in protest against laws which restrict and will eventually ban their machines.

Bogotá environmental officials aim to prohibit the two-strokes because they're much more polluting than four-stroke engines. Two-strokes burn lubricating oil along with gasoline, and so often leave a trail of white smoke. They can also be loud.

Motorcyclists are complaining about the prohibition, but the writing's been on the wall for years. In 2009, Bogotá prohibited the registration of additional two-stroke motorcycles in the city. And Bogotá is way behind developed nations, which mostly banned two-stroke motorcycles decades ago. Lots of people use two-stroke motorcycles for their work. They won't suffer a total loss, however, since they can sell their motos to people living in other parts of Colombia where the machines are still allowed.

Unfortunately, the new law specifically excludes the bici-motos, because their engines are tiny. The bic-motos may not pollute much, but they often use bike lanes, subjecting the bicyclist behind them to fumes. A bicycle with a motor is a motorbike and should be on the street, not in a bike lane or on La Ciclovia. 

It's a good thing to clear out the two-strokes. But the city could reduce pollution lots more by junking those clunking, decades-old buses. However, the bus companies wield lots of political and economic power and want to keep those ancient, groaning fare collecting machines on the road, no matter what they're doing to our health.

Today also had more potentially positive news for Bogotá's air. To commemorate World No Tobacco Day, the minister of health announced that as of July 22 tobacco advertising and the sale of loose smokes will be prohibited. We'll have to wait and see whether the anti-loosies law actually gets enforced, as loose cigarrete sales are ubiquitous and very culturally accepted. However, buying single cigarrettes lets young people first experiment with tobacco and gets them hooked before they realize it.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours.

Colombia's OTHER Smuggling Problem

Scotland's Dream, Colombia's Problem?

Just imagine the frustration: You're a big-time drug cartel boss; you've managed to smuggle a load of cocaine to the United States or Europe and sell it for millions. You bribed and smuggled your load across borders, past civil and military authorities and rival gangs and even escaped the hazards of storms and floods along the way. Now your cool millions are in friendly hands over there in New York, Miami or Madrid...but that won't do you much good, since your employees, supplies and the mansion you want to buy are all back here in Colombia (or Peru or Venezuela or Bolivia...)

So, what's an ambitious drug boss to do?

The situation's not so easy, particularly with authorities on the lookout for travelers with tens of thousands of dollars strapped to their bodies and for big, unexplained bank transfers. But, fortunately for our protagonist, there is a solution, in an elegant combination of money laundering and money smuggling.

Here's what you do: Your employees set up an import-export company on some Carribean island where authorities ask few questions and appreciate a nice new Roles every now and then. That company buys merchandise - exactly what matters little - and ships it to Colombia (or Peru or Bolivia...), where it's all sold. Now, you've got your money inside the country, as well as a good story for how you got that money. The system's so good that you might not even care much if you sell your product at a loss. After all, you made a ton on the drug sale, and the main thing is to get your hands on your money. So, you can afford to be generous.

In Colombia, such schemes have been carried out with with products such as weapons, cigarettes, liquors and even such hum-drum items as dishwashers. To secretly import his wealth, one entrepeneur imported tools such as hammers and wrenches, but filled them with gold. (Imagine the happy surprise for someone who bought a used hammer at a flea market and then accidentally broke it apart.)

Smuggling's in the news now because of government reports that more than three-quarters of the liquor consumed in Colombia is contraband, as are many cigarettes. That means lots of damage: it hurts honest local businesses, deprives government of taxes (which finance public health services) and artificially lowers the costs of those liquors and cigarettes, luring more kids in particular to start smoking and drinking.

Many of these boxes lack the required graphic warning -
does that mean they were smuggled in?

Perhaps the most sinister part of this is the information gathered some years ago by the Center for Public Integrity and others indicating that big tobacco companies conspired to get their products smuggled into Colombia, where they were often used to bring in drug profits. The tobacco companies say they have no control over where their products are eventually sold - even though they shipped huge quantities of cigarettes to tiny Carribean islands. At the same time, they were apparently encouraging smuggling, the tobacco companies were also arguing to the Colombian government that the smuggling showed that tobacco taxes were too high. Oh, pity those poor cancer sellers!

Around the world, tobacco smuggling has been documented as a funding source for terror groups, just as has happened with Colombian guerrillas and paramilitaries. Last year, tobacco product smuggling reportedly doubled, costing the government several million dollars in taxes.

Colombian provincial governments sued tobacco companies for their lost tax money, and eventually settled out of court. Now, however, it all appears to be happening again.


By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Who'll Stop the Cigarrette?

Colombia is finally taking real steps against cigarette smoking - or trying to.

A recent law requires graphic symbols on cigarette packages, which will add to or replace the existing very weak warning, which says only 'Smoking is damaging to health'. One of the new symbols, which have already begun appearing on packages, shows a cigarette curved downward to represent impotence. Bogotá also recently passed an anti-indoor smoking law, which is being respected to a surprsing degree, even by many bars. The law will also further restrict advertising and ban sales of loose cigarettes - which get kids hooked. (Tobacco interests tried defending the habit as a civil right!)

Cigarettes for 5 cents each in the public university.

Loose smokes, peanuts and candy for sale together on a Bogota sidewalk.

Colombia has a particularly ugly history in relation to tobacco. Media investigations about a decade ago documented how Philip Morris and British American Tobacco sold huge quantities of cigarettes to shady companies on the Durch Island of Aruba, which then smuggled them into Colombia. The smuggling was apparently used by Colombia's outlaw guerrillas and paramilitaries to launder their drug money - yet another connection between tobacco and terrorism.

Have a free Marlboro today. You'll pay for it forever. 

Colombia still has a long way to go. I still see attractive young kids handing out cigarette 'samples' to young people on streets near universities. And they don't ask for proof that the recipients are of smoking age. And, the Mustang brand still sponsors a professional soccer tournament - something which I'd thought was illegal.

And the question, as always, will be enforcement. Particularly destructive are the loose cigarette sales by informal street vendors. Those are favorites for high school and college kids, who, according to a recent study, can get hooked by smoking just one cigarette per month! Kids usually don't have the cash to buy a whole box, and anyway they don't want mom to discover that box in their jacket pocket. So, loose smoke sales are a convenient way for them to get hooked.

Single cigarette sales are supposed to be banned by the new law, but I'm waiting to see them try to enforce this. The best way, by having kids try to buy, doesn't seem to be in the Colombian police's toolbox.

Smoking reportedly causes 400 deaths per year in Bogotá - a number which surely doesn't include deaths by second-hand smoke. Even so, that's many more people who are killed in the city by terrorism. Yet, the United States government sends billions of dollars down here to combat terrorism, while US companies continue pushing tobacco products on young Colombians.

This blog written by Mike Ceaser, of Bogota Bike Tours.