Don - you fail to make an important distinction. One big Columbian cocaine cartel was discovered to routinely discuss business at a neighborhood Columbian coffee shop in plain sight. That's what made them so hard to identify and catch. Too obvious to be spotted. And the secret of any successful business is to start with good coffee in the morning - whether you're in charge of the coca production, the books, or torturing and executing rivals (there were three big bosses, plus a small army of underlings). Just the right amount of buzz. In some cocaine plantations, an actual user of the drug per se would be executed. Just chewing the leaves per se isn't the same thing, and has apparently been done for thousands of years in the Andes as their version of wake-up. I have a neighbor from the Andes.
Here if someone needs something to sledgehammer themselves, they buy Peet's coffee (the original supplier for Starbucks way back when, but with a hefty dose of glacial acetic acid in it, and maybe cocaine too, perhaps creosote and copper napthanate wood preservative - real jolt coffee that my stomach can't handle. I prefer rich but mellow Rwandan or Ugandan or Ethiopian coffee beans, or Hawaiian Kona.
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