{"id":64939,"date":"2015-01-14T09:00:46","date_gmt":"2015-01-14T14:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=64939"},"modified":"2015-03-16T16:08:00","modified_gmt":"2015-03-16T21:08:00","slug":"how-prohibition-put-the-cocaine-in-coca-cola","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2015\/01\/14\/how-prohibition-put-the-cocaine-in-coca-cola\/","title":{"rendered":"How Prohibition Put the Cocaine in Coca-Cola"},"content":{"rendered":"

You may be familiar with the fact that the coca in Coca-Cola was originally cocaine. But did you know that the reason we infused such a beverage with the drug in the first place was\u00a0because of prohibition<\/a>? Cocaine cola replaced cocaine\u00a0wine.<\/em>\u00a0In fact, when it was debuted in\u00a01886, it was described as\u00a0“Coca-Cola: The\u00a0Temperance\u00a0Drink.”<\/p>\n

The first mass marketed cocaine product was Vin Mariani, a cocaine-infused Bordeaux introduced in the 1860s. Legal and requiring no prescription, it was believed to “restore health and vitality” and I’m sure it felt like it did. Wikipedia reports<\/a> that it included\u00a07.2\u00a0mg of cocaine per ounce; comparatively, a\u00a0line snorted is about 25 mg.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"3\"<\/a> \"4\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Yes, Vin Mariani was good for men, women, and children. The “tonic of kings!” Even the Pope! He loved it so much he called it a \u201cbenefactor of humanity\u201d and gave it a Vatican\u00a0Gold Medal:<\/p>\n

\"2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But he was just the most eminent of its fans. Mariani’s media blitz included endorsements<\/a> from Sarah Bernhardt, H.G. Wells, Ulysses S. Grant, Queen Victoria, the Empress of Russia, Thomas Edison, and the then-President of the United States, William McKinley.\u00a0Jules Verne reportedly joked<\/a>: “Since a single bottle of Mariani’s extraordinary coca wine guarantees a lifetime of 100 years, I shall be obliged to live until the year 2700!”<\/p>\n

Vin Mariani\u00a0dominated the market, but there was an American chemist, John Smith Pemberton, who made a competing product:\u00a0Pemberton’s French Wine Coca. He\u00a0described<\/a>\u00a0it as an “intellectual beverage.” Pemberton was located in — you guessed it, Atlanta — and the state enacted temperance legislation in 1885. Hence,\u00a0Coca-Cola was born.<\/p>\n

Cross-posted at Pacific Standard<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You may be familiar with the fact that the coca in Coca-Cola was originally cocaine. But did you know that the reason we infused such a beverage with the drug in the first place was\u00a0because of prohibition? Cocaine cola replaced cocaine\u00a0wine.\u00a0In fact, when it was debuted in\u00a01886, it was described as\u00a0“Coca-Cola: The\u00a0Temperance\u00a0Drink.” The first mass […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":64949,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[41,2056,252,237,253,23703,1776,3920,85,304],"class_list":["post-64939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-celebrity","tag-crimelaw","tag-healthmedicine","tag-drugs","tag-history","tag-marketing","tag-nation-france","tag-nation-united-states","tag-politics","tag-the-state"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/11\/25.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64939"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65749,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64939\/revisions\/65749"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}