![]() ![]() ![]() That’s hardly the interesting part of the story, though. ![]() The only criminal charge ever brought against Coca-Cola for its formula, in fact, was in 1911 when the US Department of Agriculture believed that the company was “marketing and selling an adulterated beverage that was injurious to health because it contained a deleterious ingredient, namely, caffeine,” according to the chief of the Bureau of Chemistry. This is what we capitalists refer to as a “market regulation,” by the way, for all of you who believe that government is needed to regulate the reckless excesses of the free market. To avoid angering and alienating a consumer base, the company removed the narcotic component of their product. In fact, the cocaine alkaloid was removed from the formula for coke in 1903 due to pressures from negative press against cocaine use. But this is not why cocaine was removed from Coca-Cola. The first federal drug law was the Harrison Narcotics Act passed in 1914, which criminalized the unlicensed sale of cocaine and opium products. It is well-known trivia that the original formula for Coca-Cola contained cocaine, but the lesser known history of Coca-Cola has other interesting components involving the government, cronyism, and the War on Drugs. ![]()
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