Mr Banzer may be right in saying that some Yungas coca is supplying the drug trade.
Bolivia's anti-drug law allows 12, 000 hectares of Yungas coca, to satisfy demand for its traditional uses.
It will be much harder to persuade them that the same applies in the Yungas.
Neither is it easy to grow other crops in the Yungas, where alternative development has already been tried, unsuccessfully.
In what looks like the first step in its Yungas campaign, the government is squeezing the tightly-regulated legal coca market.
You are right that replicating this success in Yungas, where alternative development projects are also essential, will not be easy.
By law, all coca produced in the Yungas must be taken to La Paz, where it is bought by 700-odd registered retailers.
The government, relying on American satellite-derived data, claims that coca cultivation in the Yungas exceeds the legal limit by some 2, 000-3, 000 hectares.
They were discontinued in the late 1980s when Bolivia's substance-control law allowed cultivation in Yungas of 12, 000 hectares of coca intended for traditional uses.
Another 12, 000 hectares are grown legally in the mountainous Yungas region.
Mr Morales's demand for more coca in the Chapare region does not resonate in the parts of the Yungas where coca is grown legally for traditional use.
Yungas's organic coffee and agro-forestry have enormous potential for growth.
By contrast, in the steep, high valleys of the Yungas, coca cultivation is a slow and back-breaking business, involving building and maintaining terraces and a three-year wait for a first crop, according to Fidel Ticon, a farmers' leader.
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