David Rosenthal: belief

Transcript context

…And actually the coca plant was also bitter, so sugar was to offset it. “Next, he added caramel for coloring, giving the syrup its dark, distinctive port wine color. To balance the sweetness of the sugar and give the syrup its tang, he added lime juice, citric acid, and phosphoric acid. Then as the basic blend cooled, Pemberton turned to the question of flavor. Into the mix went vanilla extract, elixir of orange, and several pungent oils refined from various fruits, herbs, and trees—lemon, nutmeg, spice brush, coriander, and neroli. The last ingredient in perfumes distilled from a flower of the orange tree. The most exotic was oil of cassia, also known as Chinese cinnamon, made from the bark of a tree found in the tropical regions of Asia. Of course, Pemberton added this brew to the fluid extract of coca leaves. Exactly how much cocaine went into the inaugural batch of Doc Pemberton’s new soft drinks syrup is impossible to calculate more than a century later, but with even a touch of the drug in combination with the sugar and caffeine, four times the amount in today’s Coke made Pemberton’s concoction quite a stimulating beverage.” Yes, indeed. As best as I was able to read from a few different sources, I think roughly, once Coca-Cola starts being produced in that first decade, (call it) four or five glasses of Coca-Cola would be about the equivalent of a line of cocaine today. So it would take a lot of Coca-Cola. If you’re drinking that much of that formula, you’re having the equivalent of 16 cokes worth of caffeine. It’s an absolute crap ton of caffeine and sugar. By that description, the cocaine probably would affect you less than the sugar and caffeine in the mix.…

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