It worked for Kool-Aid, so why not for adult beverages? The Food and Drug Administration has just given the go-ahead to market and sell an alcohol in powder form called Palcohol. It will be available in liquor stores this fall, according to the company website.
Interest in the curious new product has already driven thousands of people to the official website, which at the moment is still under construction.
So how does Palcohol work? With four flavors to choose from — Cosmopolitan, Mojito, Powderita, and Lemon Drop — the powder is mixed into five ounces of liquid to create a drink that contains just as much alcohol as a standard cocktail. The powder can even be sprinkled onto food, though as the website warns, the intoxicating food should not be given to minors.
Another question is: What motivated the creation of Palcohol when conventional mixed drinks do the trick just fine? Palcohol responds:
Sometimes liquid isn’t convenient. Because Palcohol is powder and very light, you can take it just about anywhere to enjoy a cocktail! That’s why we say: “Take your Pal wherever you go.”
When and where is liquid inconvenient? Probably where it’s not supposed to be, and the first place that comes to mind is school. It’s much easier to traffic several packets of lightweight powder onto school grounds than, say, a couple fifths of vodka. This coming fall, we’ll no doubt start hearing stories of lunchroom lads?surreptitiously sipping on cosmopolitans, which pair well with the school’s cheddar cheese fries, I’m told. Hell, skip the cosmopolitan altogether and sprinkle the stuff directly onto the fries to calm your nerves before that huge vocabulary exam.
All joking aside, it’s all too unfortunate that Palcohol, like any conventional hard beverage, will be used as a date rape method. But unlike conventional alcohol, which is hard to dupe someone into drinking, Palcohol could be mixed into a dish as completely innocuous as potato salad. A few unsuspecting bites of that, and, well, no need to speculate what the results might be.
The company that owns Palcohol,?Lipsmark, must have already envisioned some of the more nefarious ways in which consumers might abuse their product. They even have a response to consumers who have asked whether the powder can be snorted.
We have seen comments about goofballs wanting to snort it. Don’t do it! It is not a responsible or smart way to use the product. To take precautions against this action, we’ve added volume to the powder so it would take more than a half of a cup of powder to get the equivalent of one drink up your nose. You would feel all pain for little gain. Just use it the right way.
“Just use it the right way,” indeed. If only this simple advice effectively convinced people to use prescription drugs, guns, automobiles, and elections “the right way,” we might not have so many messes on our hands.
Edited/Published by: SB
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Joseph Guyer?lives in Texas. An ad man by trade, he firmly agrees?with Bill Clinton that there is nothing wrong with America that can’t be cured by what is right with America. You can read more of his work at?Liberals Unite,?DemoNews, and?SenaReider. You can also follow him on Twitter?@joerobguy.
