Toothpaste from coca?

Press, 14 December 1983, Page 36

Toothpaste from coca?

NZPA-AP Lima The coca leaf, the source of the drug, cocaine, also promotes dental health, says the Peruvian Government’s National Coca Company, announcing that it will market a coca toothpaste and a chewing gum. The Enaco director, Mr Juan Vasquez Gorrio, told a chemical engineers’ convention that studies of peasants in the Peruvian Andes, who

chew coca leaves to combat hunger and fatigue, showed they had good teeth. Paste from green coca leaves is refined to make cocaine. An extract from the leaves also would be used in the legal manufacture of the toothpaste, gum, and other Coca Company products. The coca is considered harmless in leaf form.

The coca company had decided to make coca tooth-

paste and chewing gum, Mr Vasquez said, after studies showed that 90 per cent of the peasants who chewed coca leaves had better teeth than those who did not chew them.

He did not say when the toothpaste and chewing gum would be marketed or if the products would be exported. The company was already marketing a coca leaf tea, and planned to make soft drinks, Mr Vasquez said.