Chavez finances coca factories

At the Drug War Chronicle:

It’s a trio that gives the Bush administration nightmares, and they were all together in Bolivia last weekend. Bolivian President Evo Morales hosted Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in what he called an “axis of good” during a visit to Bolivia’s coca-growing Chapare region, and Chavez announced he would support Morales’ call to legalize and industrialize the coca leaf by providing $1 million in funding for research into coca’s uses and factories to turn it into coca flour or tea.

My first reaction is to have a nice chuckle over the likely discomfiture of the drug warriors over this news. And that’s fine. But then I think about how incredibly destructive our drug war has been to Latin America and how difficult it is for them to struggle to find solutions to that overbearing imposition, and I get serious again.