When Did Coca Cola Stop Using Coca

The claim: The first bottle of Coca-Cola contained 3.5 grams of cocaine

Claims that Coca-Cola contains the illicit drug cocaine have existed since the company'due south founding. Now, they're circulating on social media.

"The first bottle of Coca-Cola from 1894 contained around 3.5 grams of cocaine," the Facebook post, shared by iii,000 people, reads. "Explains why our parents & grandparents could walk to & from schoolhouse, uphill, both means, in the snow, barefoot."

The person who posted the meme did not respond to USA TODAY's request for annotate.

Early on Coca-Cola independent cocaine

Coca-Cola did, in fact, once contain cocaine, co-ordinate to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. When the popular drink was invented, it was start marketed as a "patent medicine"; cocaine was legal at the time and was a common ingredient in medicines, according to the institute.

The cocaine in the potable – and later, its removal – presented a "delicate public relations problem" for the company in its early years, according to the book "For God, Country and Coca-Cola."

"If the visitor responded to attacks by telling the truth, they would be albeit that the potable did in one case have cocaine in it," writer Mark Pendergrast wrote in "For God, Country and Coca-Cola." "The implication would be that they had removed it because it was harmful, which might even open the door to lawsuits. Likewise, it was unthinkable to admit that Coca-Cola had ever been anything but pure and wholesome."

Coca-Cola, one of America's most familiar and iconic products, wouldn't have existed without enslaved Africans. The kola nut, from which Coke, Pepsi and so many other soft drinks derive, is not American. It's African. It comes from the kola tree, indigenous to Nigeria and other parts of West Africa.

Co-ordinate to the book, John Candler, grandson of Coca-Cola founder Asa G. Candler, attempted to rewrite history by denying the potable ever had cocaine in it.

Company spokesmen told The New York Times in 1988 that the original recipe, brewed in 1886, included cocaine, only the drug was eliminated from the recipe just afterward the turn of the century.

In response to U.s. TODAY'south request for comment, Ann Moore, a spokesperson for Coca-Cola, said the drinkable "does not contain cocaine or any other harmful substance, and cocaine has never been an added ingredient in Coca-Cola."

The cocaine in the drinkable was more specifically ecgonine, a forerunner to cocaine, according to Snopes. It was derived from excerpt from the coca plant.

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Although coca leaves are illegal in the The states, the visitor withal uses them to make their famous drink after they've been "de-cocainized" past Stepan Chemical Co. in Maywood, New Jersey, according to Scientific American.

Cocaine formerly in potable likely much less than 3.5 grams

While there'due south no way to know for sure exactly how much cocaine was one time in the popular soda, it'south unlikely the amount reached 3.5 grams.

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According to Snopes, which examined the claim in 1999, in that location was but 1/400 of a grain of cocaine per ounce of syrup past 1902 and the drink was cocaine-gratuitous past 1929, when the de-cocainization process was perfected.

Our rating: Missing context

We rate the claim that the outset bottle of Coca-Cola contained iii.v grams of cocaine every bit MISSING CONTEXT because without boosted information it could be misleading. While Coca-Cola did once contain some cocaine, information technology's very unlikely the drink contained that much.

Our fact-check sources:

National Institute on Drug Abuse, November. 9, 2020, Did Coca-Cola Always Contain Cocaine?
Mark Pendergrast, May 2013, "For God, State, and Coca-Cola"
Coca-Cola Great Britain, October. 1, 2020, Does Coca‑Cola contain cocaine?
Snopes, May nineteen, 1999, Did Coca-Cola Ever Contain Cocaine?
Scientific American, July 27, 2015, I'd Like to Brand the World a Coke: Attempting the "Original" Coca-Cola Formula
New York Times, July i, 1988, How Coca-Cola Obtains Its Coca

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Our fact-bank check work is supported in role by a grant from Facebook.