Dilute Cocaine in Vin Mariani, Coca-Cola & Harvey Wiley - According to Steven B. Karch

A Brief History of Cocaine - Steven B. Karch pp 100-102 If our drug policies appear convoluted today, think how they must have looked to the owners of the Coca-Cola Company just after the turn of the century. In 1911, company officials found themselves in federal court, charged with, among other things, not putting cocaine in Coca- Cola. Popular histories of this period usually lump Coca-Cola with the [sic] other quack nostrums [sic- a nostrum is simply a medicated liquid meant to be take orally], often suggesting that the problem of cocaine abuse in America was, in some way, connected to the successes of the Coca-Cola Company. Except for the titillation factor, the idea has little to recommend it. Even when Coca-Cola contained cocaine, the amounts were trivial; too small to produce measurable physiological or behavioral changes. Coca-Cola was not responsible for America's cocaine problem, but government harassment of the Atlanta soft drink maker did mark ...