When cocaine and alcohol
meet inside a person,
they create a third unique
drug called cocaethylene.
Cocaethylene works like
cocaine, but with more
euphoria.
So in 1863, when Parisian
chemist Angelo Mariani
combined coca and wine
and started selling it, a
butterfly did flap its
wings. His Vin Marian
became extremely
popular. Jules Verne,
Alexander Dumas, and
Arthur Conan Doyle were
among literary figures
said to have used it, and
the chief rabbi of
France said , "Praise be to
Mariani's wine!"
Pope Leo XIII reportedly
carried a flask of it
regularly and gave
Mariani a medal.
Seeing this commercial
success, Dr. John Stith
Pemberton in Atlanta --
himself a morphine addict
following an injury in the
Civil War -- set out to
make his own version. He
called it Pemberton's
French Wine Coca and
marketed it as a panacea.
Among many fantastic
claims, he called it " a
most wonderful
invigorator of sexual
organs ."
But as Pemberton's
business started to take
off, a prohibition was
passed in his county in
Georgia (a local one that
predated the 18th
Amendment by 34 years).
Soon French Wine Coca
was illegal -- because of
the alcohol, not the
cocaine.
Pemberton remained a
step ahead, though. He
replaced the wine in the
formula with (healthier?)
sugar syrup. His new
product debuted in 1886:
"Coca-Cola: The
temperance drink."
After that, as Grace
Elizabeth Hale recounted
recently in the The New
York Times, Coca-Cola
"quickly caught on as an
'intellectual beverage'
among well-off whites."
But when the company
started selling it in bottles
in 1899, minorities who
couldn't get into the
segregated soda fountains
suddenly had access to it.
Hale explains:
Anyone with a
nickel, black or
white, could now
drink the cocaine-
infused beverage.
Middle-class whites
worried that soft
drinks were
contributing to
what they saw as
exploding cocaine
use among African-
Americans.
Southern
newspapers
reported that
"negro cocaine
fiends" were
raping white
women, the police
powerless to stop
them. By 1903,
[then-manager of
Coca-Cola Asa
Griggs] Candler had
bowed to white
fears (and a wave
of anti-narcotics
legislation),
removing the
cocaine and adding
more sugar and
caffeine.
Hale's account of the role
of racism and social
injustice in Coca-Cola's
removal of coca is
corroborated by the
attitudes that the shaped
subsequent U.S. cocaine
regulation movement.
Cocaine wasn't even
illegal until 1914 -- 11
years after Coca-Cola's
change -- but a massive
surge in cocaine use was
at its peak at the turn of
the century. Recreational
use increased five-fold in
a period of less than two
decades. During that
time, racially oriented
arguments about rape
and other violence,
and social effects more so
than physical health
concerns, came to shape
the discussion. The same
hypersexuality that was
touted as a selling point
during the short-lived
glory days of Vin Mariani
was now a crux of
cocaine's bigoted
indictment. U.S. State
Department official Dr.
Hamilton Wright said in
1910, "The use of cocaine
by the negroes of the
South is one of the most
elusive and troublesome
questions which confront
the enforcement of the
law ... often the direct
incentive to the crime of
rape by the negroes." Dr.
Edward Williams
described in the Medical
Standard in 1914, "The
negro who has become a
cocaine-doper is a
constant menace to his
community. His whole
nature is changed for the
worse ... timid negroes
develop a degree of
'Dutch courage' which is
sometimes almost
incredible."
Yes, even the Dutch were
not spared from the
racism.
The Coca-Cola we know
today still contains coca --
but the ecgonine
alkaloid is removed from
it. Perfecting that
extraction took until 1929,
so before that there were
still trace amounts of
coca's psychoactive
elements in Coca-Cola. As
Dominic
Streatfield describes in Cocaine:
An Unauthorized
Biography, the extraction
is now done at a New
Jersey chemical
processing facility by a
company called Stepan. In
2003, Stepan imported
175,000 kilograms of coca
for Coca-Cola. That's
enough to make more
than $200 million worth
of cocaine. They refer to
the coca leaf extract
simply as "Merchandise
No. 5."
The facility is guarded.

Source
m.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/01/why-we-took-cocaine-out-of-soda/272694/