In the age of fake news, the world is full of hoaxes and urban legends that make us distrustful of people, brands or stories of our daily lives. From the satanic sects that supposedly govern us to the side effects of COVID vaccines, more and more fake news stories keep popping up that many swallow without thinking too much about it.
But there is an urban legend that has been circulating for years and years and actually has a very interesting basis in fact. I’m talking about the legend that Coca-Cola has cocaine in its formula. Well, that’s not true today; but in its conception it was as true as water is wet. On Twitter, user @TrungTPhan has explained it all, and his story is pretty amazing.
The Coca-Cola formula with cocaine in it
In 1885, chemist John Stith Pemberton created the original Coca-Cola formula in his pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia. The drink was initially marketed as a tonic that relieved headaches, fatigue and other ailments. One of the main active substances in the drink was coca leaf, which Pemberton imported from Peru. The coca leaf was rich in alkaloids, including the controversial cocaine.
As many people know, cocaine is extracted and chemically processed from coca leaves. The plant has mild stimulant effects and has been used by the indigenous peoples of South America for thousands of years. It is often used by chewing the leaf or steeping it in tea, and knowing this, Pemberton thought it was interesting to use it for his flagship product.
In fact, during the 19th century many Europeans used cocaine for recreational purposes. Not like today’s cocaine addicts, but through extracts such as the Vin Mariani drink, which is a combination of cocaine and red wine.
After the U.S. Civil War (1861 – 1865), pharmacists in the U.S. began to produce drugs to stimulate and relieve headaches and body aches. Not only did they contain cocaine, but also drugs such as opium, morphine or even heroin.
Thus, Pemberton’s product was just one more of all these pseudo-pharmaceutical products of the time. In reality, what Pemberton did was to borrow the Vin Mariani formula from Europe, adding kola nuts, which have caffeine.
In the early years, the beverage was produced in small quantities and was not in great demand. However, over time, Coca-Cola‘s popularity skyrocketed and demand grew exponentially. By the late 1890s, the company was producing millions of bottles a year.
However, Georgia restricted alcohol in the 1880s, which forced Pemberton to change his formula, as it included red wine. It was with his new formula, which increased the dose of cocaine (although it was not very high either), that he began to make an impact worldwide.
However, critics blamed the drink for the cocaine addiction that began to emerge, and raised racist fears that it was leading to black crime. To deal with the bad PR, Candler removed cocaine from the formula in late 1902.
Later, in 1929, the company began using decocainized coca leaves to produce its formula, thus eliminating any trace of cocaine in the beverage. The company still uses coca leaves to produce its extract, but now imports the leaves from Peru and processes them at a facility in New Jersey.
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