Get it: "A Secret History of Coffee, Coca, and Cola"

Ricardo Cortes, the "Secret" author, has been researching this book for years. It's the kind of journalistic work that changes the way you see the world. (And he can draw!)

His campaign for transparency in the international trade of the coca leaf has lead him here: the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, which he explains way better than I ever could in the linked editorial.

Evidently, that schoolyard legend about cocaine in your Coke is actually still true...maybe. At least, the Coca Cola Company includes coca leaves in its legendary secret formula...and the treaty says their brewing partners--Maywood Chemical Works--are the only ones in the world that can get them.

My doesn't that keep the price low?