Colombian President Alvaro Uribe is taking the war on drugs to the supermarket, prohibiting the sale of products made from the coca plant.With the help of more than $600 million a year in U.S. aid, Uribe has strengthened Colombia's anti-narcotics police, seized record tons of cocaine and extradited 520 drug-trafficking suspects to U.S. jails.
But until recently, his hard-line government had not gone after natural coca products made by Indians, acknowledging that millions of peasants have chewed calcium-rich coca for thousands of years to stave off hunger and as a remedy for ailments from altitude sickness to stomachaches.
Uribe's presidential Web site even promoted natural coca products as a rare commercial enterprise for poor Indian communities, and the federal food-safety agency provided quality-control advice to the manufacturers of coca tea, cookies, shampoo and other consumer goods.
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