Bolivia Pushes for Acceptance of Coca-Leaf Chewing Bolivian President Evo Morales is urging a 53-nation U.N. narcotics control meeting to accept his push for the legalization of coca-leaf chewing and growing for traditional uses. At the same time he is calling on developed nations to give him helicopters and aircraft to crack down on illegal cultivation outside of family plots. Bolivian coca growers chew coca leaves during the so-called "National day of coca leaf-chewing" in La Paz, Bolivia, Monday March 12, 2012. Bolivia held a national campaign in defense of chewing the coca leaf, known locally as "acullico," parallel to a request for the legalization of this practice which Bolivia's President Evo Morales will make at a UN meeting in Vienna, Austria. (AP Photo/Juan Karita) Close Bolivia renounced the U.N.'s anti-drug convention last year because it classifies coca leaf as an illegal drug. Bolivia's military government ratified the convention in 1961, committing the country to eradicate coca within 25 years. But Morales, in comments Monday to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime meeting, described that move as a "historical error" that needed correction.