International Journal on Criminology Volume 6, Number 2, Winter 2018/Spring 2019 | Page 9

International Journal on Criminology
ered expert in the field were appointed to lead it: Professors Marcel Alfred Granier-Doyeux
and Frederic Verzar, who were joined by Messrs Howard Fonda and
Jean-Philippe Razet. 14
In May 1950, after a short fact-finding mission in 1949 that spent 11 days in
Bolivia and 35 days in Peru, the Commission of Inquiry into coca leaves, operating
under the control of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), produced
a report of its findings. In two sentences, we are told that coca is a cause of poverty
in Latin America, of the malnutrition seen there, and even of the “mental deficiency”
of the populations in the Andean region and therefore for the poverty of the
sub-continent. It thus seems essential to acquire international legislative instruments
capable of addressing the challenge.
The Commission had come to the conclusion that chewing coca leaves endangered
the human organism, but were not able to class it as “a drug addiction
in the medical sense.” 15 Shortly after this, a committee of drug-dependency specialists
repeated this “argument” and classified the consumption of coca leaves as
a form of cocaine addiction. Their work was later severely criticized. Attention
was drawn to the “standing” of the authors, the methodology of the investigation,
and above all its moralizing discourse and occasionally racial connotations. The
report’s bibliographical appendices give a clear idea. Dr Ricketts is quoted as stating
that the Indian, after a number of years of coca and alcohol use is under-nourished,
physically incapable, and apathetic, has no memory and lacks all interest .
His moral values also change: "He is a liar, a hypocrite and a pickpocket, and
is neglectful of his own person and of his family." 16 Earlier writers such as Carlos
Gutiérrez Noriega and Vicente Zapata Ortiz had opened the door to this approach
in 1948, in their studies on the mental faculties of coca users , presenting it as a
factor in [such] racial degeneration. But they were careful to point out that the evidence
of these blights cannot be observed over a user's full lifetime because their
lives are so short, but that it might be possible if they lived longer.
In the report, which set the scene for seven decades of international relations
centered on coca, Carlos Gutiérrez Noriega is quoted more than 60 times, often in
14 Marcel Alfred Granier-Doyeux, a Venezuelan pharmaceuticals specialist was head of the mission
and above all a close friend of Harry Anslinger, director of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics; he was
accompanied by Howard Fonda, vice-President of the American company Burroughs-Wellcome
& Co.; also participating were a Hungarian, Frederic Verzar and the Frenchman, Jean-Philippe
Razet. Only one of these four, it would seem, spoke Spanish. None spoke Quechua, Aymara and/or
Guaraní. Razet, relatively unknown to the French public, had been in January 1923 Principal Secretary
of the central laboratories of the French Ministry of Agriculture. Twenty years later, he became
Inspector General of Fraud Prevention and Head of the Narcotics Bureau. In 1952, he became
Inspector General and Director of Fraud Prevention at the Ministry of Agriculture. In this role, he
oversaw the complete codification of all regulations regarding narcotics, including coca leaves.
15 United Nations, Report of the Commission of Enquiry on the Coca Leaf (Lake Success, New
York: UN Economic and Social Council, 1950), 93.
16 United Nations, Report of the Commission of Enquiry on the Coca Leaf, 125.
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