By Neirin Gray Desai for Dailymail.Com
13:12 01 April 2023, updated 13:12 01 April 2023
- The New Jersey plant receives up to 500 metric tons of coca leaves each year
- No other company in the US is allowed to import coca and make cocaine
- After the leaves are “decocained” for syrup, the narcotic is sold at the pharmacy
A small chemical processing plant tucked away in a quiet New Jersey neighborhood has an exclusive license to import coca leaves into the US on behalf of The Coca-Cola Company and manufactures up to $2 billion worth of pure cocaine each year.
The leaves are used to produce a “decocained” ingredient for the iconic soft drink, and the cocaine byproduct is sold to the nation’s largest opioid manufacturer, which markets the powder as a topical anesthetic and anesthetic agent for dentists .
The simple Maywood facility has been processing coca leaves for Coca-Cola for more than 100 years and is now run by a chemical manufacturer called the Stepan Company.
this operates under special licenses issued by the DEA and is the only company in the US authorized to import coca leaves and manufacture cocaine.
And that same year, on January 30, Stepan successfully renewed his request for permission to continue importing the controlled substance into the US.
The DEA did not respond to a DailyMail.com request for details on how much coca the company imports, but in the 1980s it was reported that more than 500 metric tons of leaf could enter the plant in a single year.
Five hundred tons of leaves could yield something in the neighborhood of two million grams of cocaine, which, according to online drug company listings, could be worth around $2 billion.
Most of what is known about the secret deal was released in the late 1980s, when government officials and Coca-Cola finally went on the record.
The New York Times reported at the time that Stepan imported between 56 and 588 metric tons of coca each year, mostly from Peru, but also from Bolivia.
Ricardo Cortés is an illustrator and author of the book A Secret History of Coffee, Coca and Cola, which tells the story of the drink and how the company behind it obtained the exclusive rights to process the coca plant in the USA
Records acquired by Cortés and released by the National Company of the Coca, a Peruvian state-owned company, stated that between 45 and 104 tons of leaves were exported to Maywood each year between 2007 and 2010.
“They are the most American red, white and blue brand, but they don’t want to be associated with the drug wars,” Cortés told DailyMail.com.
“They’re doing a refined version of what’s happening in the Bolivian jungle.”
The coca leaf is the plant source of cocaine and is used to manufacture the drug illegally in parts of South America, including Peru, Bolivia and Colombia. It has been illegal to import the leaves into the US since 1921.
However, The Coca-Cola Company, now worth about $265 billion, has been importing the “controlled substance” freely for the past century. In that time, while governments have scrambled to crack down on the notorious coca plant, the company miraculously avoided restriction.
Article 27 of the 1961 United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, which imposed strict controls on coca cultivation, made suspiciously precise exceptions.
“Parties may permit the use of coca leaves for the preparation of a flavoring agent, which does not contain any alkaloid, and, to the extent necessary for such use, may permit the production, import, export, trade and possession of these. leave,’ says the provision.
Residents of Maywood told Dailymail.com that the chemical facility emits plumes of smoke early in the morning and sometimes at night.
One resident, who has lived directly opposite the site since 2003 and wishes to remain anonymous, said: “At first I didn’t realize what was going on, but I heard rumours. In the early morning, that’s when smoke comes out and sometimes when I walk it smells like burning, very strong’.
They also described how there is often a police car parked outside the plant and trucks are seen going in and out throughout the day.
Stepan runs the New Jersey operation with two licenses, which he renews every year: one allows the company to import coca leaves and the other gives him permission to manufacture “other controlled substances.”
The chemical company is headquartered in Illinois, but operates 20 locations worldwide: in South and North America, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
According to its website, the Maywood location is used for the production of ‘esters, lubricants, food ingredients and specialty products.’
The facility, located on Hunter Avenue in the neighborhood, makes a variety of chemicals and houses more than 30 types of hazardous materials.
Although little is known about these materials, the company’s production of “vegetable extract” is likely a reference to coca leaf syrup, sometimes mysteriously known as “formula #5.”
In 1988, the Associated Press reported that the pharmaceutical giant from St. Louis Mallinckrodt was the only entity in the US authorized to receive Stepan’s cocaine.
Mallinckrodt lists “cocaine hydrochloride,” the technical term for powdered cocaine, as available for purchase on its website.
“USP CII Cocaine Hydrochloride” can be purchased in quantities of 5 or 25 grams, but is “intended for US healthcare professionals only,” the site says.
The importance of coca leaves in the production of Coca-Cola goes back to the invention of the drink by Dr. John Stith Pemberton in the 1880s.
Pemberton, a biochemist and pharmacist from Georgia, made a unique syrup that combined coca leaf extract, which at the time was known to contain the increasingly popular cocaine, with West African kola nuts that contained caffeine.
The syrup could be diluted with soda and was marketed as a medicine to combat pain and fatigue.
Pemberton’s drink quickly grew in popularity, and in 1888 his son sold the patent for the recipe to Georgia businessman Asa Riggs Candler for about $2,300, the equivalent of about $75,000 today.
Candler founded The Coca-Cola Company to make use of the patent and marketed Coca-Cola as: “Delicious.” refreshing exciting Invigorating.’
The business was very successful and he eventually became the mayor of Atlanta.
Although the Coca-Cola Company stopped including cocaine in the drink in the early 19th century, it continued to use coca leaves as a flavoring.
in 1903 the company began working with a German chemist, Dr. Louis Schaefer, who immigrated to the US in 1885, according to his obituary in The Herald-News of New Jersey.
Schaefer founded Maywood Chemical Works, which worked closely with federal agencies to import Peruvian coca leaves to its chemical plant in New Jersey.
In 1921, the Harrison Act banned the importation of coca leaves. But included in the legislation was a curious exemption for Maywood Chemical Works, which could continue to extract cocaine from the leaf.
In 1959 Maywood was bought by Stepan Chemicals, which has been making flavored extract for Coca-Cola drinks ever since.
The secretive operation has attracted its fair share of controversy over the years, with some questioning how the exclusive deal could be anti-competitive.
“Coca-Cola’s success as the mega-company it is today is due, at least in part, to special privileges granted by the government during World War II, and to the suppression of potential competitors in the early years of Harry Anslinger’s anti-drug policies .” says a 2016 paper published by the Mises Institute.
Anslinger he was the commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, which is now essentially the Drug Enforcement Agency, and was at the center of the relationship between The Coca-Cola Company and the government.
“He’s kind of infamous in drug law and politics. He was really against marijuana,” Cortés said.
Cortés visited the US National Archives in Maryland and saw the letters exchanged between representatives of Maywood Chemical Works and Anslinger, in which the two conspired to mislead a reporter reporting on their affairs.
“We don’t want the publicity that an article like this might bring,” Maywood Chemical president MJ Hartung wrote to Anslinger upon learning that a LIFE magazine reporter wanted to cover his deal.
Anslinger responded to Hartung’s letter with a note to Ralph Hayes, the vice president of The Coca-Cola Company at the time, saying, “I agree with you that these articles are for nothing but harm.” .
DailMail.com wrote to The Coca-Cola Company and Stepan Company for comment on the Maywood facility and the importation of coca leaves from South America, but did not receive a response.
