WHO rejects coca leaf reclassification, and Andean growers count the cost

On a table in Coripata, east of La Paz, sits a pile of green leaves that Bolivian farmers have chewed and brewed for thousands of years — for tiredness, for hunger, for the headaches and breathlessness that come with living at altitude. The question of whether those leaves may ever be sold lawfully beyond the Andes has just been answered again, and the answer was no: the World Health Organization has declined to change the coca leaf’s international status, closing off the coca leaf reclassification that Bolivia and Colombia had pushed for since 2023.

The decision came last December, 65 years after the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs placed the leaf in the same schedule as the alkaloid refined from it. The Guardian reports that the leaf therefore stays listed alongside heroin, fentanyl and cocaine, on a schedule covering 138 substances and recognised by 186 countries.

What makes the outcome strange is what the WHO’s own critical review said along the way. According to The Guardian’s account of the review, the assessment found that Erythroxylum coca does not harm human health, and recognised antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial and anticancer properties in the leaf.

A finding of no harm, and a listing that did not move

The review is the first published critical review of coca the WHO has produced, requested by Bolivia in 2023 with Colombian backing. The committee’s stated reasoning, as quoted in the review, was that evidence on dependence, long-term safety and therapeutic use remains too thin to justify opening international trade in the leaf for medical and scientific purposes.

WHO technical officer Dilkushi Poovendran told The Guardian that rising cocaine seizures, growing rates of stimulant use disorder, and the appearance of cocaine in countries that had not previously seen it were all weighed in the decision. The leaf itself contains 1% or less of the cocaine alkaloid — closer, in daily use, to tea or coffee than to anything sold by a dealer.

Key figures reported from the review and the surrounding debate:

• An estimated 5 million people consume coca leaf daily as a mild stimulant and traditional remedy.
• The WHO calculates that roughly one tonne of dried leaf yields about 900g of cocaine at 85% purity, through a three-stage process.
• Poovendran states that converting leaf to coca paste is straightforward and does not require large volumes of leaf or many chemicals.
• John Walsh of the Washington Office on Latin America disputes the practical relevance of that, arguing the volumes involved make diversion from legal coca tea or flour uneconomic.

What reclassification would have unlocked

Former Bolivian vice-president David Choquehuanca, whose office coordinated the reclassification effort, described the ruling to The Guardian as a violation of Indigenous rights to use and share the leaf. A change of status would have cleared the way for national governments to lift bans on coca teas, balms and toothpastes.

The WHO’s position is that countries can already commercialise preparations such as coca-leaf tea within existing controls. In practice, national drug laws tend to follow the UN listing, which is how a cup of tea ends up regulated as though it were a narcotic.

Walsh points to a circularity in that arrangement: the research that might justify reclassification is itself constrained by the listing. Meanwhile the campaign’s next move — an appeal to the UN Economic and Social Council, which may have scope to override the recommendation — needs a country willing to lodge it, and The Guardian notes Bolivia has a new conservative government while Colombian president Gustavo Petro’s term ends in August.

Why we care

We think the honest reading is that this is a setback, not an ending, and that its most damaging effect is on evidence rather than on trade. A published critical review that finds no harm to health is, on the record, a useful document for anyone arguing that the leaf and the drug are different things. The listing did not move, but the reasoning behind it is now visible and arguable in a way it was not before.

For Australian readers the practical position is unchanged, and we are not suggesting otherwise. What has changed is the quality of the conversation available: the debate can now turn on a specific finding and a specific rebuttal, rather than on decades-old assumptions nobody had written down.

We would also note the history the campaigners keep returning to. A large WHO study on cocaine, due out in 1995, was never published after the US delegation raised the prospect of funding cuts to drug programmes — and this latest recommendation lands as the US, long the strongest opponent of changing coca’s status, withdraws from the WHO from January 2026. A leaf that has travelled with Andean people from birth ritual to funeral rite has now been through two international reviews in thirty years. It is still waiting for a hearing on its own terms.