Interesting marketing strategy. Name it and sell it in a way guaranteed to get it pulled, maximizing exposure so when the renamed product appears, everyone knows about it. Complainers look like asses to the young who are smart enough to know it ain’t what the name says it is. Those who bought it with the original name have a collectors item that will increase in value.

Cocaine energy drink pulled from shelves

An energy drink called Cocaine has been pulled from stores nationwide amid concerns about its name, the company that produces it said Monday.

Clegg Ivey, a partner in Redux Beverages LLC of Las Vegas, Nevada, said the company plans to sell the drink under a new name for now.

The Food and Drug Administration issued a warning letter last month that said Redux was illegally marketing the drink as a street drug alternative and a dietary supplement. May 4 was the deadline for the company to respond.

The FDA cited as evidence the drink’s labeling and Web site, which included the statements “Speed in a Can,” “Liquid Cocaine” and “Cocaine — Instant Rush.” The company says Cocaine contains no drugs and is marketed as an energy drink. It has been sold since last August in at least a dozen states.

“Of course, we intended for Cocaine energy drink to be a legal alternative the same way that celibacy is an alternative to premarital sex,” Ivey said.

“Our goal is to literally flush Cocaine down the drain across the nation,” said Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who announced the company’s agreement with his state Monday.

Fans responded to the announcement that Redux would stop marketing Cocaine by leaving dozens of messages, many of them profanity-laced, on a page created for the product on the social networking site MySpace.com.



  1. Mr. Fusion says:

    (from the article)
    “What we can’t do is distribute our product when regulators in the states and the FDA are saying that if you do this, you could go to jail.”

    Yet the government has few qualms about allowing poison food products from China into the food system.

  2. BubbaRay says:

    #1, Mr. Fusion, wish I were more informed about FDA procedures re: imported food products, esp. those not meant for human consumption. Any information on this would be most welcome, thanks.

  3. Anonymous Coward says:

    I snorted coke once. I nearly drowned.

  4. rax says:

    Having solved all other crime Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal stated: “Our goal is to literally flush Cocaine down the drain across the nation”

    The good people of Connecticut should flush this loony toon down the tubes for wasting taxpayer money. No surprise he’s been called one of the nation’s top ten worst State Attorneys Generals.

  5. DaveW says:

    Anyone who buys these so called “energy drinks” in the first place is a few juleps short of a derby. :).

    Just another way to cram more sugar into an already overweight populous.

    And, since we are supposed to be a free country, they should be able to call it “horse shit in a can” if they want to. I know a few people who would buy that!

  6. mark says:

    5. Agreed. And caffeine is a drug, and an addictive one at that. But if you take mine away, I will F**k you up.

  7. John Paradox says:

    Okay, everyone put down the JOLT[TM] and back away from the keyboard.

    J/P=?

  8. mark says:

    NO!

  9. BubbaRay says:

    #7, #8, J/P and Mark, occasionally, it is permissible to have a Jolt and Jack D. Now that is a prize winning combination. (Unless you have access to a car or computer.)

  10. George of the city says:

    Is JOLT still available I have not seen it in years? I agree jolt and jack a winning team.

  11. Ollie says:

    I don’t do the whole energy drink thing but at a time when shelves are so jam packed with eleventy billion different brands are trying to scream for your attention a name like Cocaine is sure to catch the eye. This blog (http://www.unboundedition.com/content/view/419/50/) also had a good point about how a perfume can be sold under the name Opium without any controversy. Smelling it isn’t going to get you high.


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