This fantasy is grievously far from the realities of cocaine harvesting and the networks that support cocaine production and consumption, realities Kaitlin admits she isn’t quite privy to from where she’s standing. The long-standing argument over whether cocaine is vegan has been the subject of forum discussions and LiveJournal entries for years. It’s a specious line of thinking that many people within the Venn Diagram of vegans and cocaine users subscribe to, even though it’s been challenged time and time again along ethical and environmental lines.

"If it were legal to make, it could be done without all the negative things we all know surround it, right? In some fantasy world, we could grow organic, sustainable coca plants and appropriately control and dispose of all the harsh chemicals required to extract the active chemical."

McSweeney is a professor at Ohio State University's Department of Geography whose work, which involved embedding in Honduras’ La Mosquitia region, has focused on the widespread deforestation wrought upon pockets of Central America by cocaine farming and trafficking. “Whether or not you care would presumably depend on whether or not you're primarily an ethical vegan who cares about all living things, or an environmental vegan who feels that eating otherwise harms the planet,” she explains to me. “If the latter, then nope, cocaine's not part of a truly vegan diet. If the former, maybe it's justifiable to you.”

Cocaine is extracted directly from the coca plant, its leaves plucked, ground, pulverised, and mixed vigorously with a base that’s usually lime salt and kerosene. The resultant solution is eventually filtered and then dried into a paste, and the excess product gets tossed into surrounding bodies of water.