Yeah, and imagine if you combined it with the extract of the cola nut, and mixed it with sugar and carbonated water to make it into a drink…it would be Coca-Cola!
Oh, wait…
The scientific name of the Coca plant is Erythroxylon coca.
The scentific name of the Cacao plant, that chocolate is made from is Theobroma cacao.
No one other than you in this thread asserted that the two plants were the same. Wildest Bill seemed to, in the op, but it was a typo.
Chocolate covered crack?
Bibliophage & Captain Amazing are right, usurper.
Cacao and Cocaine are two entirely different plants, with different processing methods. For chocolate and cocoa, the fruit is used, and for coca and the overpriced white powder, the leaves contain the active constituents.
In the case of Papaver Somniferum, it’s the latex from the developing seed pods that is used, not the seeds themselves, which don’t contain the active alkaloids.
There’s a lot of good information about the plants discussed here in the links. It’s not my intention to provide information about their illicit use, but to dispel a bit of botanical ignorance.
I visited Peru several times times in 1997-1998, and coca leaf tea was readily (and legally) available in many restaurants. The effect is a mild pick-me-up, nothing like a cocaine “high.” (I’m glad my line of work doesn’t require random drug tests.) The use of coca leaves, for chewing and as tea, is so ingrained in Andean cultures that banning it would be like banning tea or coffee in the U.S.
I’m going off memeory here from something in the Scientific American quite a few years ago…
Coca leaves are legally imported into the US and the cocaine extracted for use as an anesthetic during some types of eye surgery (IIRC, it constricts the blood vessels - Quadgop, ya around?). The remaining residue is then sold to the Coca-Cola company for use as “natural flavoring”
In addition, I believe Unca Cece had something about this in a column a while back.