LIST 5

31 Products Containing Hard Drugs

1. Coca-Cola

From 1886 to 1902, Coke contained coke. John Pemberton, the Atlanta pharmacist who created it, first made a different drink. French Coca Wine was a knock-off of France's insanely successful Vin Mariani that added another pick-me-up—the kola nut. Pemberton's alcoholic cocaine-caffeine brew was selling well (no surprise there), but the temperance movement pressured Atlanta into banning booze starting July 1886. Scrambling madly, Pemberton came up with a drink that kept the coca and the kola, lost the wine, and added sugar, citric acid, and carbonation. Coca-Cola was born. The company's official history denies that Coke ever contained cocaine, but the drink's drug-induced beginnings are just too well documented. For instance, an 1896 ad for Coke begins:

It seems to be a law of nature that the more valuable and efficacious a drug is, the nastier and more unpleasant its taste. It is therefore quite a triumph over nature that the Coca-Cola Co. of Atlanta, Ga., have achieved in their success in robbing both coca leaves and the kola nut of the exceedingly nauseous and disagreeable taste while retaining their wonderful medicinal properties, and the power of restoring vitality and raising the spirits of the weary and debilitated.

By the early 1900s, though, a backlash against cocaine was storming society, so the company started phasing it out in 1901, and by 1903 the drink was blow-free.

2. Atkinson's Infants' Preservatives

3. Battley's Drops (a brand of laudanum)

4. Battley's Sedative Solution (morphine)

5. Bullard & Shedd's Wine of Coca

6. Café-Coca Compound

7. Cassebeer's Coca Calisaya
(cocaine, 42 percent alcohol)

8. Coca-Bola

During the heyday of products containing cocaine, a doctor in Philadelphia marketed a gum called Coca-Bola. Each ounce contained a whopping 710 milligrams of nose candy, meaning that each stick was infused with the equivalent of several lines of snorted coke.

9. Cocaine Tooth Drops

10. Dope Cola

11. Dover's Powder (morphine)

12. Dr. Don's Kola

13. Dr. Fahrney's Teething Syrup
(morphine)

14. Dr. James' Soothing Syrup (heroin)

15. Dr. Moffett's Teething Powder (opium)

16. Dr. Tucker's Asthma Specific
(420 mg/cocaine per ounce)

17. Fraser's Antiasthmatic Tablets (heroin)

18. Glyco-Heroin

19. Godfrey's Cordial
(sweetened laudanum for babies)

20. Koca Nola

21. Kola-Ade

22. Kos Kola

23. Maltine with Coca Wine

24. Metcalf's Coca Wine

25. Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup
(morphine)

26. Rococola

27. Street's Infants' Quietness

28. Vapor-OL Treatment No. 6 (opium)

29. Vélo-Coca

30. Vin Mariani
(see the second list in this chapter)

31. Wiseola