Re: RARA-AVIS: I get no kick from Coca-Cola

From: Buzz ( BuzzMeeks@attbi.com)
Date: 03 May 2002


Maybe it's just the skeptic in me, but if there was such an infinitesimal amount of cocaine in Coca-cola, why did it take until 1929 to phase it out?

Brad

> "How much cocaine was in that "mere trace" [of cocaine]is
> impossible to say, but we do know that by 1902 it was as
> little as 1/400 of a grain of cocaine per ounce of syrup.
> Coca-Cola didn't become completely cocaine-free until 1929,
> but there was scarcely any of the drug left in the drink by
> then. . . . [T]he amount of ecgonine [an alkaloid in the
> coca leaf that could be synthesized to create cocaine] was
> infinitesimal: no more than one part in 50 million. In an
> entire year's supply of 25-odd million gallons of Coca-Cola
> syrup, Heath figured, there might be six-hundredths of an
> ounce of cocaine."

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