Just say "No" to Cocaine.

And the wheels of justice, every turning, succeed in making a mockery of reason. In Texas, a new energy drink, with the racy name of "Cocaine" has been banned for sale by the Republican Attorney General, Greg Abbott. The energy drink actually has no cocaine in it, unlike the original version of Coca-Cola®, and is completely legal, under any sense of the word, to market. Unless you are a self-righteous politician who is coming up for re-election next year, and need a platform to build a case for that re-election, that is.

How a soft-drink, or more properly an "energy drink", can be any more harmful to consumers because the makers claim it will get you "high" as opposed to, say "give you wings", is anybody's guess. Whatever the name of the product is, it's still what is in the product that matters. If the product were determined to actually have cocaine in it, then you have a case, not only for banning it, but arresting the makers for illegal distribution of a controlled substance.

But to make some kind of case out of it that the makers are inadvertantly (or even directly) promoting drug use is ridiculous. I'm not kidding. WOAI's afternoon talk jock, Joe "Pags", actually spent an hour in discussing this, and refused to budge, despite the fact that an overwhelming majority of his callers disagreed with him. As a matter of fact, in 2007, the Democrat Attorney General of Illinois used the very same criteria as a basis for removal of the product from sale in that state. (I wonder if she was up for re-election in 2008?)


The news story that I read stated that the office of Greg Abbott claims that "the defendant made unsubstantiated claims that it could help treat depression, lower cholesterol, prevent hardening of arteries and protect nerve fibers from glucose damage." If their website had these claims at one time, they are not there now, so I only have the word of the Attorney General that they did. I don't really think a company would be that irresponsible with laws governing such claims, but if it did, then the worst that should have happened was a fine and immediate withdrawal of the unsubstantiated advertisement.

Tune in next time, when we ban the Crock Pot. Surely they want people to start toking it up.