The energy drink has a lot of caffeine, sure, but it contains no illegal substances; it is only named after one. Nevertheless, the Food and Drug Administration recently warned the company that their product was illegal.
That’s the way I took it. I mean, cocaine is a tangible and possible ingredient, unlike “kick” or “boost” or “surge” or whatever else other energy drinks claim to give you.
The brother of one of our investors is trying to distribute energy drinks aimed at ethnic markets. There is one called Caballo Negro and another one called Pimp Juice
The Caballo Negro gave me cramps. Ain’t no way I’m putting anything called pimp juice in my mouth, but I am pretty sure they are exactly the same thing.
That was my first thought upon hearing the ruling, too. Opium is OK, but Cocaine isn’t?
How about Liquid Heroin, then, and all those other cutely-named mixed drinks? (“Hey, this navel has Fuzz in it!”)
So alternatives to street drugs are illegal now? I really don’t get this.
Addressing the false-advertising claim (which I didn’t even think of when I wrote the OP):
As Muffin reminds us, Coca-cola was also named after the drug; in fact, it kept a minuscule amount of cocaine in its recipe for years precisely to avoid false-advertising claims. It also continues to advertise its product as “Coke”, which is probably a more common reference to the drug than ‘cocaine’.
Anyway, I hesitate to bring it up (even though it is a big pet-peeve of mine), but there are demonstrably false claims in just about every commercial I’ve ever seen. Sometimes I think the advertising companies were the ones pushing for “truth in advertising” laws simply to lull the public into a false belief that “if they claim it in a commercial, it must be true or else they couldn’t air it”.
So what makes this product (Cocaine the drink) any different than Red Bull, which doesn’t contain bulls, or weight-loss pills that don’t have any effect on your weight, or any number of products that exaggerate their effects or contents to the point of falsehood?
I’m not a lawyer, nor an FDA lover. However, I don’t think anyone could reasonably believe Red Bull has bulls in it, while they might believe a drink had some cocaine or cocaine derivative in it.
I would imagine that a drink called “Tureen” that didn’t actually have tureen in it would run into problems. I don’t know this, but I would guess that you can’t make peanut butter without peanuts or orange juice without oranges.
I acknowledge that lots of products make silly claims, but we seem to hold food to a higher standard.
I can imagine a tureen with drink in it, but not a drink with “tureen” in it.