Why Are Nocturnal Butterflies Addicted to Coca?
Colombia's unlikely ally in the fight against cocaine
A botanic garden at night is a sight to behold. The intricate play of shadows and light mesmerizes you. The attenuation of daytime visual stimuli awakens other senses: you can hear and feel the forest – and the creatures that live in it – moving and breathing. It feels mystical. The myriads of moths fluttering through the air contribute to the ethereal Midsummer Night’s Dream-like atmosphere. You can hardly see them – just a faint shimmer in the dark sky and a slight turbulence from the wing passing by your cheek: “There are few spectacles in the world as exciting as seeing a handful of these insects fly,” says Alberto Gómez Mejía, the founder of the Quindío Botanical Garden.
This 15-hectare garden, complete with a butterfly farm, was founded in 1979 by Mejía, a lawyer and environmentalist. He was the president of the National Network of Botanical Gardens of Colombia for 10 years and has written numerous books describing the flora and fauna of the country’s exceptionally biodiverse nature. But he is perhaps best known for his extensive work to document the many unique species of butterflies endemic to the lower Andean region of Colombia. The Quindío butterfly pavilion houses 1,500 varieties of butterflies, which represents 10% of the total number of species on the planet, including the unassuming nocturnal moth Eloria noyesi.
This translucent moth, barely an inch in size, belongs to the subfamily Lymantriinae and is found mostly in Colombia and Peru. Lymantria means "destroyer", and it is a fitting name: this tiny insect can ravage entire groves with its insatiable appetite for specific types of leaves. Eloria noyesi larvae happen to be loco for coca – this species, along with roughly 250 other insects, feeds almost exclusively on the leaves of the infamous plant used to make cocaine. Due to the peculiar food preference of these moths, Colombian scientists have proposed a plan to cultivate and release large numbers of them as an environmental measure to destroy coca crops.
Dirty business
Cocaine was once upon a time the biggest export of Colombia and earned the country its bad reputation. It caused a lot of violence, hardship, and tears, and still constitutes a big problem for many regions of the country. From 1994 to 2015, the Colombian government, with the support of the United States, was trying to control the drug production by carrying out large-scale aerial glyphosate fumigation over regions where the coca plant is grown. Unfortunately, glyphosate has terrible effects on human health and the environment, which is why the campaign was terminated thanks to the pressure from activists.
An active ingredient in the widely-used herbicide Roundup, glyphosate1 kills plants indiscriminately, putting Colombia’s rich biodiversity at risk. But that is not its only danger: it also harms bees and other important pollinators. For people, glyphosate poses serious health risks: acute exposure can cause irritation and severe poisoning. Chronic exposure carries an even bigger risk: glyphosate accumulates in tissues like liver and kidneys, reproductive organs, endocrine system, and wreaks havoc on the gut microbiome.
A recent meta-analysis (a statistical analysis of many independently conducted research studies) showed that the concentrations of glyphosate used in commercial formulations cause neurotoxic effects, behavior, and motor skills disorders. Another study indicated that chronic exposure can cause negative effects on mental health through disruption of the gut microbiome. And an epidemiological study of Colombian populations affected by glyphosate had a higher prevalence of skin and respiratory illnesses and miscarriages.
EPA deems glyphosate “safe” at the levels it’s currently used in agriculture, but this verdict is highly contested by scientists. In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic”. There is even a class action lawsuit against Bayer, the maker of glyphosate, involving more than 100,000 people who allege that they developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma from exposure to Roundup. But because the EPA has given it the green light, glyphosate is still actively used all over the U.S., especially in Monsanto’s “Roundup Ready” genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
This is where I feel like I need to clarify my GMO stance. As a scientist who has spent a decade making genetically modified bacteria in the lab, I understand that there is nothing inherently scary about GMOs. Genetic engineering is simply a tool. What could make this powerful technology potentially dangerous is using it for nefarious purposes. The crops that are engineered to be resistant to glyphosate can grow in the presence of the herbicide that kills all native plants and weeds, which means that they are heavily sprayed. Corn, wheat, and soy are some of the foods that contain the highest amounts of this toxic chemical.
It should come as no surprise that glyphosate is a huge money maker for chemical companies: its market cap is currently almost $10 billion and is expected to grow to $17.7 billion by 2031. Even though the environmental groups helped put the harmful glyphosate spraying practice on pause in 2015, Colombia faced pressure from the U.S. to resume the fumigation of coca plantations in 2019. Luckily, the pandemic halted those efforts and allowed the advocates to pass a ruling at the Colombian Constitutional Court to ban aerial fumigation. The question remains though – how to deal with the coca plantations?
Free Market Economics
Coca plants have been grown and used in the Andean regions of South America for at least 8,000 years. During all this time, there was no drug problem in Colombia2. I find it ironic it gets painted as the villain in this story, while no one talks about the fact that it is Great Britain, USA, Australia, and Western Europe that are the highest cocaine consumers. We give the poor drug addicts a free pass while putting all the blame on the suppliers. But if coca cultivation did not have such a huge economic incentive, Colombia’s “cocaine problem” would fix itself – without the need for destroying the native ecosystems with disruptive chemicals.
The coca plant has been traditionally used by indigenous people living in the high Andes to help with altitude sickness and adaptation. Typically, the leaves are chewed together with a piece of calcium lime or brewed as a tea. In such form, coca acts as a mild stimulant and increases endurance by suppressing hunger, thirst, pain, and fatigue. Interestingly, when the coca leaf is consumed in its natural form, it does not induce a physiological or psychological dependence, nor withdrawal symptoms associated with substance abuse. It has even been suggested as a method to help with cocaine addiction recovery.
The Incas used coca as a part of honorary celebrations and rituals. Archeologists have found many artifacts that indicate the long tradition of coca use, such as gold vessels for coca leaves and lime, and even mummies with a coca ball behind the cheek that was supposedly used to aid their long journey to the other worlds. Later, the Spanish conquistadors encouraged the use of coca to increase the natives’ labor output and tolerance for starvation.
La Gringa
When the plant was brought to Europe, it was praised initially for its cognitive stimulatory effects and used in preparations such as coca wine and the original Coca-Cola recipe, which included a "pinch of coca leaves". At the turn of the 20th century, the pure chemical extract (cocaine) became a popular local anesthetic and “pep pill” that you could buy at your local pharmacy. The most famous user and praiser of the substance was probably Sigmund Freud, along with the fictional cocaine aficionado Sherlock Holmes. Its popularity took off in the mid-1990s and early 2000s among the Wallstreet bankers and rave-goers. In the U.S. alone, the cocaine market was $85 billion in 2009, exceeding the revenues of Starbucks.
So, my question is: is it Colombia’s problem or that of the Western world? There is something in the Western mentality that makes us take everything to the extreme, such as turning an ancient medicinal plant into a destroyer of lives.
When the natives of the Amazon region learned that the Eloria noyesi moth species had an insatiable appetite for coca leaves, they began ironically calling her “La gringa”. The idea to use these natural drug enforcement agents has been around for a while: la gringa, the coca tussock moth, was responsible for the successful elimination of coca crops adjacent to the Igaparaná River in Bolivia at the beginning of the 80s. But for some reason the recent proposal to use coca’s natural predator in Colombia was struck down by the government, saying it was “not an issue that affects Colombians.”
It is obvious that it does. The problem is that people high up in the supply chain do not want to stop it. The complacency of politicians and the immense power of international cartels causes the suffering of innocent people. The coca farmers are not the ones who are pushing the drugs. Overwhelmingly, people are forced to grow coca by violent methods, not of their own volition. In fact, many Colombian farmers have switched from coca to cacao cultivation, which provides a stable income for them. But as long as the appetite for cocaine is stronger than that for chocolate, neither toxic chemicals nor biological mitigation efforts will be able to help.
If you are interested in learning more about glyphosate, check out these resources:
By the way, there still is not a cocaine problem in Colombia. The cultural stigma against cocaine use is pretty strong here, and Colombia is sitting far down at #33 on the list of countries with the highest cocaine consumption.
Some effects of chronic glyphosate exposure: impacted kidney function, liver necrosis, mammary tumors, and hormone disruptions: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27752412/