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Just in case you think that your glass of Coca-Cola needs a bump, a New Jersey company has now reached a deal with the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to continue imports of a plant used to make cocaine.

But before you decide klippies n coke is your new winter tipple, the company has no intention of putting actual cocaine into their beverages, and will ‘de-cocainise’ their special ingredient.

The coca leaves are used to create a “de-cocainised” ingredient for the soda and the leftover byproduct is sold to the opioid manufacturing company Mallinckrodt, which uses the powder to make a numbing agent for dentists.

Dentists always get the good stuff.

The Maywood-based facility has been using coca leaves for its soft drink for more than 100 years and managed to renew its license to import the leaves recently. How much of the leaves they import is not certain, but a report in 1988 stated that the company shipped nearly 588 metric tons of coca leaves from Peru and Bolivia each year. That’s a hell of a lot of rails.

Ricardo Cortés, author of 2012’s “A Secret History of Coffee, Coca and Cola,” wrote that he obtained records from the National Company of the Coca, a Peruvian state-owned company, which showed that up to 104 tons of coca leaves were exported to Maywood each year between 2007 and 2010.

Importing coca leaves into the US was declared illegal in 1921, but somehow the legislation was amended to exclude imports to Maywood Chemical Works, which ran the factory before the current owners bought it in 1959. This exemption allowed Coca-Cola to continue production in North America and grow its business into a global brand, worth an estimated $265 billion (R4,7 trillion).

“Coca-Cola’s success as the mega-company it is today is due, at least in part, to special privileges granted by government during World War II, and the suppression of potential competitors in the early years of Harry Anslinger’s anti-drug policies.”

At a time when the ‘war n drugs’ was just kicking off, the company’s exemption from drug legislation caused some concern for the owners and archival letters between the two indicated that they wanted all stories about their importing of the ‘drug’ to be suppressed, fearing the publicity it would bring them. The DEA seemed to agree at the time.

“Less publicity of articles about coca leaves and narcotic drugs will be better for the public.”

With renewed attitudes toward marijuana, that old foe of Nancy Reagan, we get all kinds of CBD and THC-infused drinks these days, so perhaps we might in the future get the option of a Cocaine-infused Diet Coke.

The world is going to hell anyway, we might as well get the Bolivian marching powder going and make a party of it. Fingers crossed.

I just don’t want to be around a sports bar in Bloemfontein when that karate water with added kick gets going.

[source:nytimes]