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This plant might look harmless - but it’s dangerously addictive. In this video, we dive into the history, effects, and ...
Native to the Andes, the coca plant (Erythroxylum coca) has been traditionally used to combat fatigue, hunger, and altitude sickness, as noted in Possession of Coca Plants by Hospitals for Medical ...
Cocaine is naturally produced in the leaves of the Erythroxylum coca plant, but a team of researchers at the Kunming Institute of Botany in China decided to see if they could recreate the process ...
The health risks associated with cocaine, including its newer synthetic derivatives like pink cocaine, are severe and often ...
Journal Reference: Gaia Giordano et al, Forensic toxicology backdates the use of coca plant (Erythroxylum spp.) in Europe to the early 1600s, Journal of Archaeological Science (2024).
The study, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, said that the narcotic was likely consumed by chewing coca leaves known as Erythroxylum coca.
Cocaine is extracted from the leaves of coca plant (Erythroxylum coca), a bush native to South America. When Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci arrived in what is now Venezuela in 1499, he noticed ...
A study by a group of scientists in Italy suggests the coca plant was being used in Europe nearly two centuries earlier than previously thought, noting newfound evidence of the alkaloid of cocaine ...
The study further identified hygrine, a molecule found in the leaves of the Erythroxylum genus, which includes the coca plant.
Hygrine is an alkaloid present in the leaves of Erythroxylum spp. so it indicated that cocaine intake occurred through the chewing of coca leaves.
Play now! As the University of Oxford explains, Erythroxylum is the genus for the coca plant, and notes “In 1855 an anaesthetic alkaloid (cocaine) was isolated from coca leaves.” ...
The presence of hygrine, an alkaloid found only in the leaves Erythroxylum, the coca plant, further confirmed the drug was consumed in its plant form. "The molecules detected in these human remains ...