Hugo Chavez: I Chew Coca Every Day

President Chavez admitted to chewing coca and it's being viewed as an endorsement of illegal drug use. I'm not surprised.

From Miami Herald:

Chavez's comments on coca initially went almost unnoticed, coming amid a four-hour speech to the National Assembly during which he made international headlines by calling on other countries to stop branding two leftist Colombian guerrilla groups as terrorists and instead recognize them as "armies."

"I chew coca every day in the morning . . . and look how I am," he is seen saying on a video of the speech, as he shows his biceps to the audience.

Chavez, who does not drink alcohol, added that just as Fidel Castro "sends me Coppelia ice cream and a lot of other things that regularly reach me from Havana," Bolivian President Evo Morales "sends me coca paste . . . I recommend it to you."

It was not clear what Chavez meant. Indigenous Bolivians and Peruvians can legally chew coca leaves as a mild stimulant and to kill hunger. But coca paste is a semi-refined product -- between leaves and cocaine -- considered highly addictive and often smoked as basuco or pitillo.

"It is another symptom that [Chavez] has totally lost the concept of limits," said Aníbal Romero, a political scientist with the Caracas Metropolitan University. "It shows Chavez is a man out of control."

Chavez has praised coca before, saying he wanted to de-Satanize the product.

All this information possibly sheds a new perspective on why Hollywood-types and other celebrities flock to have meetings with Chavez. Also somewhat explained is Chavez's apparent paranoia regarding the U.S. and the ease with which he can give four-hour speeches.

Companion post at The Jawa Report.