Scientists Have Made Cocaine From a Tobacco Plant

Cocaine is perhaps most notoriously known as a dangerous drug. But it’s also used legally as a local anesthetic for surgeries. Scientists in China have now genetically engineered a tobacco plant to produce cocaine in its leaves. “Actually, it’s a big challenge to solve this unresolved scientific question,” says Sheng-Xiong Huang, a plant chemist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Kunming Institute of Botany. Researchers have attempted to determine how the coca plan