Coca "Chew-In"

On Wednesday, there were hundreds of people on the Plaza Principal in Cochabamba chewing coca leaf. This was part of a nation-wide movement to amend a UN drugs treaty that bans the chewing of coca leaf and treats it on par with heroine and cocaine. The largest "chew-in" was in front of the US Embassy in La Paz.
Chewing coca leaves is an ancient tradition in the Andes. The proposed amendment would still treat coca as a controlled substance, just relieve the ban.
Guess who is stopping Andean countries from amending the ban? The United States: world's largest consumer of cocaine!  The US position is that coca needs to be banned because it is the raw material used for making cocaine, and lifting the ban would weaken the oh-so-important, and oh-so-effective "War on Drugs."
I just have one question: when the US banned the consumption of alcohol, did they also ban eating corn and potatoes?
Watching the US meddle with impunity in the governing and culture of smaller, weaker countries reminds me painfully of their four-star work in Haiti over the past centuries.  This is one of those times that it is really handy socially that most people don't know Alaska is in the United States.