Why they took the -ine out of Coca-Cola - the REAL reason.

[DerGolgo]

I read this and all I can say is - it makes sense on an ugly level.
Apart from that, I'm a bit ghasted, though not quite flabber.
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archi ... da/272694/

But when the company started selling it in bottles in 1899, minorities who couldn't get into the segregated soda fountains suddenly had access to it.
Hale explains:
Anyone with a nickel, black or white, could now drink the cocaine-infused beverage. Middle-class whites worried that soft drinks were contributing to what they saw as exploding cocaine use among African-Americans. Southern newspapers reported that "negro cocaine fiends" were raping white women, the police powerless to stop them. By 1903, [then-manager of Coca-Cola Asa Griggs] Candler had bowed to white fears (and a wave of anti-narcotics legislation), removing the cocaine and adding more sugar and caffeine.
...
The same hypersexuality that was touted as a selling point during the short-lived glory days of Vin Mariani was now a crux of cocaine's bigoted indictment.

It's a quite interesting read, even apart from that - that they removed the marching powder because whitey's were convinced that, while it was not particularly worrisome for them, black people couldn't handle it and had to turn to crime when taking too much of it.

But that is not all. Coca-Cola is a business built on tradition, isn't it?

The Coca-Cola we know today still contains coca -- but the ecgonine alkaloid is removed from it. Perfecting that extraction took until 1929, so before that there were still trace amounts of coca's psychoactive elements in Coca-Cola. As Dominic Streatfield describes in Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography, the extraction is now done at a New Jersey chemical processing facility by a company called Stepan. In 2003, Stepan imported 175,000 kilograms of coca for Coca-Cola. That's enough to make more than $200 million worth of cocaine. They refer to the coca leaf extract simply as "Merchandise No. 5."

How about that?

[Sisyphus]

...No. 5... Got it! Thanks!

[WeAintFoundShit]

So I didn't read the article, and logic dictates that there is probably more to the high than that one alkaloid, but the question remains: are you telling me that the purest cocaine in north America comes from NEW JERSEY?

[roadmissile]

Kill Whitey.

/RM

[Mk3]

So I didn't read the article, and logic dictates that there is probably more to the high than that one alkaloid, but the question remains: are you telling me that the purest cocaine in north America comes from NEW JERSEY?

No. Because nothing pure comes from New Jersey. Even the name is recycled waste from England.

What's really to bad is that we had to lose New Amsterdam.

[DerGolgo]

Mk3 has a point, though I personally don't know about New Jersey - apparently, they do lead your country in producing vain douchebags whose colloquial name I will not use.
But cocaine made from coca can't be that pure, at least probably not as pure as synthetic cocaine made to pharmaceutical standards.
They still use it as a topical anesthetic for certain surgeries. In Australia, it's handed out on prescription to treat mouth ulcers. But even for just the surgeries, many hospitals would keep it stocked. And throw it out when it's use-before date expires, pharma companies would put such a date on a piece of granite, wouldn't they.
So, somewhere, there is a nice, unassuming chemical plant ... pumping out perhaps tons of synthetic, chemically pure cocaine, day after day after day...

I recall reading that, like heroin made from synthetic morphine, synthetic cocaine made with moder industrial chemical processing is among the cheapest pharmacological products, pennies per ounce...