Wrote this for Botany…. 
Introduction
Economically, chemically, physically and historically important the Erythroxylum coca plant continues to play its part in society today. There was debate over scientific classification of the Species E. coca.[4] That is because the two main species, E. coca and E. novogranatens, and their varieties are extremely difficult to distinguish from one another. E. coca chemically contains cocaine alkaloids, which have many psychoactive properties.[4] This type of alkaloid is what gives the plant the attributes needed for its many important uses historically, and today. It allows the plant to survive in various regions of the world ranging from cold to warm and wet to dry.[2 The alkaloid itself is also responsible for the abuse of the drug cocaine and for the various changes in medicine (anesthetics).[4] In the past Japan’ major pharmaceutical companies went out of their way to produce their own coca leaves in order to do research on them.[1] It is also responsible for the large sums of money spent each year by the United States to reduce the cultivation of the plant in the three main regions, Colombia, Bolivia, and Peru.[10, 11, 12] The plant is also very important in the economy of those three regions because the majority of the economy in the present comes from selling the leaves to drug lords. After the collapse of the tin market Bolivia became finically drained and unstable. It was the coca and cocaine that stabilized the economy of Bolivia.[6] Historically, the leaves were used for various functions ranging from medicine, religion, everyday use (calculating time), to sexual symbolism.[4]
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