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Ricardo Cortés: When I did It’s Just a Plant, I got a lot of criticism about, “We shouldn’t be teaching kids about marijuana.” The book wasn’t about teaching kids how to smoke, of course. But I got a lot of people that were like, “Well, why don’t you do a kid’s book about cocaine?” and they kind of gave me a challenge to think about that, and to think about if that would be relevant to kid’s lives. And I wasn’t really interested in doing a children’s book about cocaine, but I did think, Well, the coca leaf is highly relevant to children’s lives in the Americas. Maybe not to children in the US, but in South America, kids actually pick coca leaves and families subsist on it, and it’s been part of the culture for thousands of years. So, yeah, the book started out that way, and that’s why it sort of looks like a children’s book. Originally I was thinking it would be talking about the coca plant, and as I got deeper into the history of cocaine and Coca-Cola, which even though it takes up a huge part of the book, was kind of a secondary aspect of it. It evolved into the adult book it is.
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Some of that stuff is on my website, where you can actually see the actual documents. But my favorite part was just how chummy they got. You kind of get a sense of their different styles. Like Ralph Hayes was just a total kiss-ass, but really professional about it, a real professional, diplomatic guy who would constantly say to Harry, “Oh, you’re the best at what you do, and your department is like a beacon to the world.” And Anslinger just ate it up.
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I was calling Coca-Cola, I was talking to their PR guys, and at first I kind of approached them wanting to talk about the flavor of Coca-Cola, and they were really into it, and we were talking about how we like to drink Coca-Cola and all that. But once I started getting into the questions of “Well, OK, yeah, I want to address these rumors of coca,” they just won’t talk about that at all. But because Stepan [the company that processes coca on behalf of Coke] imports coca leaf, they have to apply to the DEA, so those records you can find. And that’s another thing, actually, that I’m about to put up on the website—you’ll be able to see the most recent filings, because they do it every couple months.What do you think about the prospects for legalizing or decriminalizing the coca plant?
Coca, in Bolivia and Peru and throughout the Andes, is technically illegal according to the UN, but if you’re there it’s not illegal at all. Everyone chews it, you can get it at the markets. I mean, coca has been chewed for almost 10,000 years, so it’s crazy that in the last couple decades we think we’re going to ban it. If the plant were going to be legalized, I don’t really think it would be a recreational drug in the United States. I mean, you basically need it kind of fresh, and it’s nothing that blows your mind. It’s not an experience you can’t get from a cup of coffee. The legalization of coca is something Bolivia is trying to do now. They’ve gone to the UN, and now they’re going again. So, we’ll have to see. The United States is leading efforts to keep coca banned. I don’t really see the US position changing any time soon, but the one thing that I would kind of love to see come out of the book is just a conversation on why is the US so adamant about trying to stop coca when we’ve given a license to Coca-Cola to use this in their plant.What are you working on next? Any plans for a kid’s book on heroin?
No, I’m not interested in a kid’s book about heroin just yet. Actually, right now I’m working on a children’s book about sharks. It’s not a political thing, it’s just about sharks. I’m kind of going back to my roots of when I was a kid drawing sharks and dinosaurs.Visit Ricardo’s website, coffeecocacola.com, for more information about this project and to see a list of events where he'll be speaking about his work. @HCheadle
