Old Coke, or the Tonic that Racism built.

Before I was born, before my parents were born, there was this drink, made in Georgia, with alcohol and cocaine in it.  It was called Pemberton's French Wine Coca.  The alcohol/ethanol in the wine and the active ingredient in the cocaine combined in the liver to create cocaethylene. (Not a scary word, just coca + ethylene.) This combination produces a longer and more intense euphoria than cocaine alone. Now, I have never tried cocaine, euphoria comes to me from dancing, bike riding, the Red Sox beating the Yankees.  But an intense long lasting euphoria is very appealing in our current dystopia.  Perhaps too appealing and I should let the bitter cold be damned and go for a good ride (coasting is a sin.)  Still, I was curious about what happened to this drink.  Well, temperance happened.

There are many takes on the temperance movement.  What seems clear to me is that it, like the effort to send corn to the starving Irish tenant farmers, missed the larger picture.  It was easier to attack alcohol than the economic system that roiled between booms and busts through which financiers and robber barons benefitting on both ups and downs and working men and women losing their jobs every few years. Non-union jobs with lousy pay, little regard for worker safety and zero regard for families. To take that on one would have to side with unions, one would have to allow women to use birth control, one would have to tax the rich to provide a stable economic platform for the working classes.  While there were activists for these causes they were not united and they were marginal, and marginalized, and what's more, criminalized.  (True Carrie Nation was arrested for attacking saloons with a hatchet, she was not beaten to a pulp by the rent-a-cops that "took care of" union "agitators." And most temperance leaders did not engage in direct violence.)

Ok, we lost Wine Coca, but surely, cocaine and high fructose corn syrup could stick around as a pick me up.  It did alright for awhile, actually.  It was a big seller at soda fountains in Georgia.  There was no concern about some demon drug taking over the minds of the genteel folk of Georgia.  In fact, as anyone from Boston knows, what are referred to now as soda or pop were, in fact, tonics. They were believed to have medicinal qualities.  Coca-Cola improved stamina and mood.  Pepsi aided digestion before temperance hit Georgia alcohol in beverages was common. It reduced pain and anxiety.  It was, in moderate doses, good for you.  And so was cocaine.  So, what happened?

Industrial bottling came to Coca-Cola.  What was 5 cents a glass was now 5 cents a bottle. And you could buy it anywhere.  You did not have to go into the soda shop.  This was a game changer because, and I know this will shock you, but I swear it is true, in the 1890s and early 20th century black people were not allowed into the soda shops.  Once Coca-Cola was bottled black men could buy it.  Black, brown, every shade of African American.  This was a problem because, according to the gentle white people of Georgia, the cocaine in Coca-Cola turned black men into rapists, specifically, rapists of white women.   Perhaps it had something to do with the interaction of lethal racism and a fear that "what goes around comes around." At any rate, Coca-Cola was the gateway to sniffing cocaine which, for black men, meant becoming anti-social racially particular rapists. This was a huge public policy concern, and though a matter of fiction it needed to be addressed.

I don't want to pick on Georgia, here.  The concern about happy black men was nationwide.  The New York Times ran an editorial in 1914 on the "Negro Cocaine Fiends" menacing the South.  The Times blamed the problem on Southern prohibition.  Deprived of alcohol blacks resorted to cocaine.  I guess it never occurred to them that black people could also set up stills.  Presciently, the opinion piece, by Dr. Edward Huntington Williams states that the only way to deal with a "Negro cocaine fiend" is to imprison him.

At any rate, Asa Candler removed cocaine from Coca-Cola, as he had removed the alcohol from Wine Coca, ahead of the legal requirement to do so. In fact, he beat the law by 11 years, making the move in 1903.  Yet he still used, and Coca-Cola still uses, an extract from the coca leaf.  What's more, the method for extracting the stimulant alkaloid was not perfected until 1929, leaving some cocaine in Coca-Cola a full 23 years after it was "removed" and 15 years after the narcotic was made illegal.  Of course, it was still legal for medicinal purposes. This was good news for Coca-Cola, because now they could team up with the pharmaceutical companies who  would process the leaves to remove the drug, and sell on the remnants to them. 

The spanner in this works was created by popularity and mass distribution.  Coca-Cola needed more coca leaf than the medical market did.  So, they got an exception to the law. Coca-Cola could import all the coca leaf it needed.  Not that this was considered ideal.  Not at all.  An attempt was made to grow coca- leaf in Hawaii.  It even worked, for six years. Then a fungus wiped out the crop.  So, back to the original suppliers.  Where are they? Peru.  Yes, the coca growers of Peru are essential to Coca-Cola.  And now that there is no cocaine in the drink it is safe for everyone, even black men, who don't mind dying of diseases linked to consumption of large amounts of sugar - diabetes, heart disease, stroke.  At least they won't be rampaging rapists immune to bullets.  It's funny, though, because in the 1980s powdered cocaine use among the moneyed was very popular, though illegal.  There was no concern that those indulging at Miami hot spots and L.A. mansions would become violent fiends. It was only the users of the supposedly stronger, reportedly more addictive and most definitely cheaper crack cocaine that caused violent anti-social behavior and bullet immunity. To say that the fear was of black people and not of the drug would be "playing the race card," I am told. 

I'm not certain who the people who think feminism and civil rights are parlor games are, but I am certain I do not want to find myself alone in a parlor with them.  I actually do not have any woman card or race card, what I have is history, from our nations founding to Jeff Sessions as AG. History and our current moment tell me that drug laws in America are all about race. Also, that Coca-Cola was never actually good for you, even it made you feel good for a little bit. Stick with coffee and tea, they are much better pick-me-ups.