Evo Morales, newly elected president of Bolivia (who has just taken a 50% pay cut in order to fund more teachers and doctors) must walk a thin line in the Drug War, appeasing its warriors as well as the Bolivian public, for whom chewing coca leaves has been a part of their culture for millennia.

Morales has been quoted as supporting “0 cocaine, but not 0 coca.” This will be a long and difficult struggle with the prohibitionists in Washington.

Balancing those interests will be a tough line, and experts say Morales most surely will have to first satisfy his domestic constituents to survive politically. The first order of business may be keeping the U.S. eradication program stopped in its tracks.

“I can’t image him staying in power if he allows the U.S. to spray large swaths of that country with a poison that kills plants and to do so with no respect for public health,” Reinarman said. “Imagine if the Bolivian air force were to spray large swaths of Kentucky and Virginia to eradicate tobacco, which has killed far more people than coca. We would respond with bombers.”

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