Will it not grow anywhere else in the world? What about under glass, which given the profit margings on cocaine would surely still be cost effective?
All other narcotic plants are grown widely, opium in the middle east and the far east, and parts of old Russia, Marijuana everywhere including bedroom cupboards and so on, yet Coca seems to be only cultivated in S America. Why?
ps I’m not advocating cultivating it, just asking why it isn’t
I heard this on Radio 4 a few weeks ago - 1. the conditions it needs to grow are very specific and difficult to replicate even in greenhouses; 2. the amount of coca plants needed to make a usable amount of cocaine is huge, making detection more likely; 3. a lab is needed to process the leaves afterwards.
In other words, it’s not like growing weed, which can just be picked, dried and sold/smoked.
So, for instance, an allotment in Putney wouldn’t be any good?
There goes my scarface fantasy.
Where can you get good Inca peasant farmers in Putney these days, anyway?
Plus, Cocaine doesn’t come packaged with its own starter kit (i.e., seeds) like Marijuana does.
The better question is: Why isn’t the cacao tree cultivated outside South America?
Mmmm…a chocolate tree in the backyard.
Huh? You can find cacao grown just about anywhere in the tropics if it’s wet enough. From this site, http://sres.anu.edu.au/associated/fpt/nwfp/cacao/cacao.html
Yeah, but it won’t grow in Vermont!
“Mother of God, … is… this the end of owlstretchingtime?”
The Ivory Coast (Africa) produces more than 50% of the world’s cacao (much of it with slave labor).
http://www.thestreet.com/pf/options/futurestensetsc/10079661.html
http://ezdragon.cortland.edu/log/us/us828/us828.htm
http://www.american.edu/TED/chocolate-slave.htm
Of course, France is working very hard to “stabilize” the area. That they end up installing a friendly puppet government in control of more than 50% of the world’s cacao has nothing to do with it, nossirree.
I think you need to realise that the Coca tree produces the “beans” that are used to produce chocolate. Chocalate is legal everywhere as far as I know.
Cocaine is the produce from an entirely different plant.
Observing my wife, I think chocolate may be a habituating drug too.
Another reason, perhaps the main one, is that it’s very difficult to start a coca plant. Coca seeds are apparently very difficult to keep alive for any amount of time; its not the kind of plant where you could simply buy a little packet from Burpee and toss the seeds in the ground. You’d probably need to smuggle an existing plant out of an area where its currently grown, and keep it nice and healthy until you got back to your place. In other words, you’d need to walk up to customs with a live coca plant, after having come from a country notorious for producing coca plants. Keeping the plant from being destroyed pretty much equals keeping it visible to anyone who takes two glances.
I have no cite for this, unfortunately, but I’m fairly certain I remember seeing a similar question on the boards at one point.
Isn’t it a bush instead of a tree?
It wouldn’t be hard to hide a coca bush in your yard,they look fairly beinign,not like cannibis’s distinctive look 
And what would the affect be of smoking or ingesting coca leaves?
Very,very mild cocaine? I remember reading about the Incas chewing the leaves as a mild stimulant.
You are mistaking “cacao” with “coca”.
Cacao is Theobroma cacao and produces pods that are the source of chocolate.
Coca is Erythroxylum coca and cocaine can be purified from its leaves (or from the leaves of many other species in genus Erythroxylum.
I once tried to tell my mother that since it came from “beans”, chocolate counted as a ‘vegetable’. And that I needed 5 servings a day.
Didn’t get very far with that argument.
Try the same with Coca and lettuce. 
I’m well aware of the difference between coca and cocao. I’m even cognizent of the fact that cocao is indeed grown outside of South America.
I just wish I could have a chocolate tree in my backyard.
Probably not. It just means that I am going to have to continue working for a living.
Drat.
Cocoa grows in Trinidad and Tobago, sometimes in the wild where plantations used to be. Interestingly enough, the pulpy fruit around the cocoa seeds is really sweet and good, too. Not chocolaty though, more like a soursop fruit.