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Who Took the Cocaine Out of Coca-Cola?
- pseingatl 2y agoYou can get a soft drink in Colombia or Bolivia containing non-decocainized coca leaves as ingredients today. The Stepan company in New Jersey is the only licensed importer of coca leaves in the US. They decocainize the leaves, removing the methyl benzoyl ecgonine (C17H21NO4) and then sell the remaining leaves to the Coca-Cola company for flavor.
- srean 2y agoThat begs the question what do they do with the methyl benzoyl ecgonine. I suppose it ends up in lidocaine and other variants.
- cykros 2y agoCocaine is also a schedule 2 substance, meaning it is actually approved and sold for medical use. Not a lot, mind you, and mostly only in hospital settings for local anaesthesia purposes, but it was absolutely found in the catalogs we used to use for doing the ordering when I worked as a pharmacy technician.
- anotheruser13 2y agoThey use it for tonsillectomies. It was the second entry on the itemized bill.
- srean 2y ago@anotheruser13 and @cykros. Thanks. I did not know that. This is why I love hackernews.
- Something1234 2y agoI think it's also used by dentists. I tried to find photos of the packaging at one point but couldn't find anything. I'm more than a little bit curious how the pharma packaging looks.
- amy-petrik-214 2y agoLocal and global anesthesia use it often, actually even though you'd think it's the anesthesiologist that uses it (because they are known to be drug fiends) usually it's the surgeon who makes use of cocaine. I remember in my medical training that old surgeon Dr. Jackson, he'd have that thick moustache that'd always look like it'd been dragged through flour. But then he'd say "let me show you how to do surgery young paduans" and I'll be damned if he didn't perform 18 whipples, 13 trepinations, and 32 colonostomies in an hard-drivin' 48 hour continuous surgery jamboree
- giancarlostoro 2y agoWait seriously? I thought that wasnt a thing anymore.
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- classified 2y agoFucking killjoys. "Anti-drug" pro-alcohol hypocrites. And racists to boot.
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- JumpCrisscross 2y agoTL; DR “While the medical profession had seen nothing wrong with tonics such as Coca-Cola advertising themselves to white, middle-class consumers for their aphrodisiac qualities, it became an entirely different matter when Black people used cocaine... Candler fought back against the damage that cocaine’s declining reputation did to his brand’s reputation, arguing that the small quantity of coca extract in Coke was merely energizing... But this strategy became less tenable in 1899, when the company expanded its sales of bottled coke to a national market. This meant that Coca-Cola was now available outside white soda fountains to anyone with a nickel to spare—including Black men.”
- mptest 2y ago>"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people," former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman told Harper's writer Dan Baum for the April cover story published Tuesday. >"You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities," Ehrlichman said. "We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."[1] Good to know it's always been like that. Legalize and tax all drugs. Spend the taxes on rehab and clinics instead of the money that will be spent no matter what going to drug lords. It is illogical to have any other drug policy than complete legalization and regulation/taxation. [1] https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-...
- koonsolo 2y agoYou quote a very US centric reason. So why aren't any other countries legalizing it?
- cqqxo4zV46cp 2y agoAs a non-American, I think that you’re underestimating or understating the US’s unfortunate influence on the rest of the world. It’s almost like they’ve been fighting for it for hundreds of years.
- argiopetech 2y agoWhile framed as a "black and mixed-race working class vs white middle class" conflict, the remainder of the article suggests that burgeoning recreational use of the pure drug informed removal of that drug from a drink where it was included in sub-therapeutic doses (9mg/drink vs 50-75mg in a recreational "dose" [0]). It's unclear to me, as written, how race was causal and why it's included as in the article. There are plenty of real problems, past and present, which we can point to as indicative of racial prejudice. The insistence on its insertion into other areas, lacking supporting evidence, is, imho, overtly harmful to discourse. I have not read the book linked as the source of this article, so I'm happy to be shown to be wrong. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola#Coca_leaf https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola#Coca_leaf
- Aloisius 2y agoThat 9 mg number appears to be off by an order of magnitude. The original recipe coca-cola recipe contained 3/200th of a grain of cocaine per serving, which would be 0.972 mg. It was then lowered to 1/400th of a grain (0.2 mg) before being eliminated.
- seoulmetro 2y agoIt's an American trend to write history as if everything was invented just to spite one race or one group of people.
- Fauntleroy 2y agoTit-for-tat, it's also an American trend to write history as if racism didn't exist at all.
- gamepsys 2y agoPeople who write histories often frame the past in order to impact how people think about the present.
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- dieselgate 2y agoWow fascinating article and worth the read. Didn’t know the Cola part comes from the caffeine containing kola leaf. Also funny to see a different Michael Cohen than the one currently in news… Furthermore the title made me think of the song “Who put the bomp” [1]. I think of Coca-Cola and soda fountains as more a post ww2 thing but very interesting to learn it’s much older, into the 19th century. Also so fascinating to hear about cocaine curing someone from a morphine addiction. [1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GyhknOznJIc https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GyhknOznJIc
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- thisisauserid 2y agoI dunno 'bout that: "Was Cocaine once an ingredient in Coca-cola? No, there’s never been any cocaine added in Coca‑Cola and there never will be." https://www.coca-cola.com/mv/en/about-us/faq/was-cocaine-once-an-ingredient-in-coca-cola https://www.coca-cola.com/mv/en/about-us/faq/was-cocaine-onc... Is someone suggesting they would obfuscate their sacred history?
- layer8 2y agoFrom TFA: “That same year [1901], Candler called for a change to the Coca-Cola formula, replacing cocaine with heavier doses of sugar and caffeine—and started denying that the soda had ever contained cocaine to begin with.”
- yieldcrv 2y agoYes, the article. > That same year, Candler called for a change to the Coca-Cola formula, replacing cocaine with heavier doses of sugar and caffeine—and started denying that the soda had ever contained cocaine to begin with.
- account42 2y agoI wonder what's the total effect of this drug policy on obesity rates.
- margalabargala 2y agoCocaine was never a coca-cola ingredient. The intro to the article exaggerates for narrative effect. Coca leaf was, and still is, an ingredient in coca-cola. So both cocaine and coca-cola are made with coca leaf, but coca-cola is not and never has been made with cocaine.
- wildzzz 2y agoIt depends on how you define an "ingredient" and "made with". Was pure cocaine added to the original Coca-Cola during manufacturing? No. Was cocaine one of the naturally occurring substances in coca leaf extract that was put in Coke? Yes. The FDA considers caffeine an ingredient in things like soda and energy drinks because it's dosed and added to the beverage. But the FDA doesn't consider the naturally occurring caffeine in coffee beans as an ingredient in something like coffee beans or a canned cold brew. A manufacturer might list caffeine content to help consumers but they aren't required to do so. Is gluten an ingredient in flour? Not to the FDA but it's still in there. Is sugar an ingredient in fresh squeezed orange juice? No but it's still in there.
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