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It's illegal no matter what the species, and if you check out the FDA website (or somesuch) you'll find a customs notice from 1986 about "Inka tea" and it being coca leaf. I've ordered it multiple times without problems, though, and since every time has been 1kg or less I really think they'd just seize it. Whatever, so far so good. If not, I was just drinking it as tea.
But I'm afraid I just fucked up my first rushed and amateur extraction attempt. I jumped the gun on filtering out the plant matter, didn't do a very good job of separating the organic and aqueous layers, and added way too much sodium carbonate in my vain attempt to precipitate the coca paste. That was because I added too much acid earlier and it was taking a lot of sodium carbonate to neutralize it all, so I was pouring it in too fast. Oh well. I saved the bulk of the plant matter so I can reuse it, get whatever's left out of it. I need to do more than one hundred grams worth of leaf at a time - considering ordering another kilogram. I also need to set up a good straining/pressing system.
One more thing: in most of the guides it has you using sulfuric acid in the coca paste process, but I was using hydrochloric. It didn't seem to me like that should prove problematic, but it could have contributed to the problem, I don't know. Thoughts?
Also, if someone has some potassium permanganate just sort of hanging around, could I get some of that? I don't need that much, I'll cover shipping and all that. That's proving difficult to find and I'm about to resort to ebay but before I do that I figured I'd ask.
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