Lehrman Beverage Law and SB Nation have articles on a new powdered alcohol product.
First and for a long time, it was just liquid. Then it was whipped, solidified and almost vaporized. And now alcohol is powderized.
I am not astonished that this is a real product — but I am absolutely astonished that this is approved. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) approved seven versions of this powdered alcohol within the past few days. The person that pushed this through must be very patient or lucky and/or good. The product seems highly likely to raise a large number of legal issues and controversies.
The website for the product appears to have been taken down due to the media response surrounding their marketing.
We were caught off guard with the release of some of our labels by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau. As a result, people visited this website that we thought was under the radar because we had not made a formal announcement of Palcohol.
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We covered the story about powdered alcohol when it was first announced, but it ran into problems. It was re-announced in mid March. Rachel Abrams reports at the NYT that six states have passed legislation to ban Palcohol, a freeze-dried, powdered alcohol developed by Mark Phillips who he says was inspired by a love of hiking but a distaste for carrying bottles of adult beverages uphill. "When I hike, kayak, backpack or whatever, I like to have a drink when I reach my destination. And carrying liquid alcohol and mixers to make a margarita for instance was totally impractical," says Phillips, who hopes to have Palcohol on store shelves by the summer. One packet of Palcohol equals one shot with each packet weighing 1 ounce and turning into liquid when mixed with 6 ounces of water. Phillips has vigorously defended his product, called Palcohol, saying it is no more dangerous than the liquid version sold in liquor stores and plans to release five flavors: vodka, rum, cosmopolitan, powderita (which is like a margarita) and lemon drop.
Critics are concerned people may try to snort the powder or mix it with alcohol to make it even stronger or spike a drink. "It's very easy to put a couple packets into a glass and have super-concentrated alcohol," says Frank Lovecchio. Amy George, a spokeswoman for Mothers Against Drunk Driving, said MADD did not typically take a stand on the dangers of specific alcohol products, but MADD is concerned about the colorful or playful packaging of such products that can sometimes appeal to children. Phillips dismisses concerns saying that they don't make sense if you think it through. "People unfortunately use alcohol irresponsibly. But I don't see any movement to ban liquid alcohol. You don't ban something because a few irresponsible people use it improperly," says Phillips. "They can snort black pepper. Do you ban black pepper?"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Saturday April 19 2014, @11:51PM
I'm guessing that alcohol snorting will become popular.
(Score: 1) by Snotnose on Sunday April 20 2014, @12:12AM
LOL. Came here to say exactly that.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by davester666 on Sunday April 20 2014, @12:49AM
Sporting events this fall will be a train wreck, especially college and nfl games. Now alcohol is fairly controlled in how much people can consume [you can't come in too wasted, and long lineups prevent all but a few from having more than a 6 pack of watered down beer. But with this, a pocketful of packets will be hard to detect and lots of people are motivated to bring it to the game.
(Score: 4, Funny) by edIII on Sunday April 20 2014, @12:13AM
If kids are putting it in their asses, you can bet dollars to donuts they are going to stick it somewhere else.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2, Informative) by GmanTerry on Sunday April 20 2014, @06:53PM
They state on the website that they have added volume to the powder to make it less potent. From the website:
11. Can I snort it? 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.
Since when is "public safety" the root password to the Constitution?
(Score: 5, Informative) by randmcnatt on Saturday April 19 2014, @11:52PM
The Wright brothers were not the first to fly: they were the first to land.
(Score: 2) by tynin on Sunday April 20 2014, @04:05AM
They do suggest that it has a filler in it now. Not exactly the fun day at the office you were looking for.
(Score: 2) by bucc5062 on Sunday April 20 2014, @01:11PM
"Because when you’re in jail, you can’t drink."
Unless the guards sneak you in some packets for a "favor". If drugs can get in, I don't doubt palahol can as well. Use it responsibility :-)
The more things change, the more they look the same
(Score: 2) by tathra on Sunday April 20 2014, @08:13PM
its typically trustees that smuggle drugs into jails. guards do a good part of the smuggling for prisons, but there's also some damn crafty ways to send powders in the mail. this is definitely going to get smuggled in though, probably even more than weed, "spice", and pills since it'll be easier to get and harder to detect.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Sunday April 20 2014, @02:48PM
1) (Cause a licensee to) break the law!
2) (Cause a licensee to) Break the law!
3) (Cause a licensee to) Break the law!
N) But please don't do anything illegal.
I'm still curious about the chemistry of the substance. It's many decades since I did organic chemistry, but AFAIR you can't dehydrate alcohol
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 20 2014, @05:19PM
Insane. An active effort to induce alcoholism and binge drinking. The people pushing this should be in jail next to meth cooks and hard drug peddlers.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday April 21 2014, @09:14AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Boxzy on Sunday April 20 2014, @12:04AM
Plink Plink fizz and One lump or two?
Go green, Go Soylent.
(Score: 3, Funny) by FatPhil on Sunday April 20 2014, @04:02PM
You should go into marketting!
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Funny) by Boxzy on Monday April 21 2014, @11:03AM
That's the worst insult I've heard in years.
I'm of the same opinion as Bill Hicks, "If you work in marketing, kill yourself."
Go green, Go Soylent.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday April 21 2014, @12:09PM
I then realised that I'd just suggested that the gpp should kill himself!
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Boxzy on Monday April 21 2014, @05:53PM
Meh, He probably had it coming. I know when I read your *incredibly hurtful remark* it made me reevaluate my life.
(I mean seriously, things I write can be construed as supporting salesmen and marketers? I feel ill)
Go green, Go Soylent.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by edIII on Sunday April 20 2014, @12:09AM
There is little difference between this and pot brownies. People making food products to get themselves fucked up is a time honored past time.
However, if you add too much pot to the brownie mix, you don't die. Might need to be watered like a plant for 2 days, but you'll live.
Powderized alcohol sounds like a recipe for alcohol poisoning. It's better that it's delivered in large volumes of fluid since that is an inherent rate limiter for consumption.
On a Darwinian note though, this will provide for some awesome natural selection in action...
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1) by JoeMerchant on Sunday April 20 2014, @12:26AM
They're saying that you mix "the powder" with 5oz of water to get "one drink" which is generally 1oz of 80 proof alcohol. I wouldn't be surprised if there's 2 or 3oz of "powder" that actually is micro-capsules with liquid alcohol inside.
In other words: if they're delivering ethanol, they won't be delivering it any more concentrated than Everclear has done for decades...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday April 20 2014, @12:50AM
Your remark about liquid volume as a rate limiter for consumption is spot-on, but the consumption of liquid itself is part of the pleasure of consuming alcohol. Whether you're a lawyer drinking single-malt scotch, a thug drinking a forty of Colt.45, or a beer snob drinking that prize Imperial stout; it's the process of drinking itself which is the pleasure*. Even the most classless frat-boy bonging that 18-pack of Bud Light knows this, he just expresses it more differently than the other examples.
Consider this scenario: You've just come home Friday after a hard day's work, you're single (or the wife and kids have magically left to visit Granny without you), and you drink that first sip. It hits your belly with its warmth and comfort, and that's only the first sip. It's like talking to an old friend, and the more you take in the better the conversation gets. In that case you'd take a couple hours, each sip feeling better than the last, with the ever-present and pleasureful anticipation of more to come. The music and the topic of conversation change as a function of consumption over time, and finally you cap off the night having no trouble going to sleep.
Or this scenario: Drinking with friends at a party or other get-together, the mere act of mutual drinking serves as the center bonding ritual. The initial teaser with the anticipation of more exciting times to come is magnified with conversation, grabassin', and cooperative altruism ("I'm gettin' another beer, anybody else want one?). Even late in the night, during or after the culmination of the day's activity, the anticipation and excitement is renewed when a friend not only drops by for a surprise visit, but with a 24-pack of Corona. *sniff* I'm getting all emotional and shit just typing this.
Ethanol and the act of drinking are linked intimately, and in many cases the link with eating is evident with vodka-infused jello shots and vodka. Perhaps the advent of powdered booze is a good thing, as it marks more obviously the classless dope addicts and drunks who want either a quick substitute for blow or prefer their buzz to be an on/off thing rather than an experience to be cherished.
The only good use for powdered ethanol, from the perspective of somebody who takes their drinking pretty seriously, is to sneak alcohol into venues and other places where costs are prohibitive or ethanol is prohibited.
* Assuming you can deal with pissing like a racehorse or a hung over wakeup in jail the next day
(Score: 3, Insightful) by GeminiDomino on Sunday April 20 2014, @01:59AM
That's assuming you're drinking for the pleasurable effects of drinking, and not drinking for the easiest-route-to-completely-pissed effect of alcohol itself. You're overestimating those "classless frat-boys."
Not that I think that should be grounds for preventing it from being sold(though it probably will be).
"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture"
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday April 20 2014, @02:17AM
Bonging beer in that manner is not only the easy route for those types, but it is a test of one's machismo.
When your belly is full of beer and your body's telling to you stop drinking, and yet you are able to take more in without puking, then you win. Everybody cheers and high-fives are given all-around. If you puke, that's it, no more for you. Everybody laughs and people keep you outside so you don't further stink up the place. The act of drinking remains intimate with the act of intoxication.
Alternately, instead of bonging beer, people are snorting ethanol like cocaine or swallowing it all with a single gulp of Red Bull. There is no sport in that. They just all sit around sober, and then they all seemingly with a flip of the switch magically and simultaneously become drunk in an instant, and some of those never wake up the next day. They don't even enjoy it, there's no proper "fade." It's because of what edill said above: The rate-limiting factor. And the social aspects of it.
Frat-boys get drunk faster and with less regard to the type of alcohol they're drinking, but the act of drinking itself remains a centerpiece of the ritual.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Sunday April 20 2014, @04:48PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1) by GeminiDomino on Sunday April 20 2014, @08:17PM
You have far too much faith in humanity if you think that same sort of simpleton won't turn "how many lines can you snort" into the same sort of competition, for the sake of some "ritual" involving a liquid. It just means a lot more of the losers will end up at room temperature, rather than drooling on themselves with penises draw on their faces.
"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture"
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Sunday April 20 2014, @11:12PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1) by GeminiDomino on Monday April 21 2014, @03:12PM
It was basically a combined response to your post and GPs, I just screwed up my quoting. :)
"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture"
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday April 21 2014, @09:54PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Funny) by Bartman12345 on Sunday April 20 2014, @03:55AM
Wow, man, no offence meant here... but you should be in marketing.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Hairyfeet on Sunday April 20 2014, @05:26AM
Funny, I feel the same way about my e-cigs, that first draw after a rough night, the nice warm relaxing feel as the vapor goes rolling out...its damned nice. I personally can't wait until pot is legal so i can have a nice buzz vape for the weekends and the regular vapes for the weekdays. And yes I know they make vaporizers for pot but they are a PITA and they just don't give you the nice relaxing vape like the liquids do, at least for me.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 20 2014, @10:49PM
Try the pinnacle pro. You'd be surprised. Also, check fuckcombustion.com, for a mature forum discussing the pros, cons and some other sides of vamping and different devices to do so (and what to do with the ABV [already been vaped]).
(Score: 1) by Magic Oddball on Sunday April 20 2014, @08:56AM
The scenario with friends could work out just as well with sodas/snacks during a gathering where the center focus is playing games (either the sort played on a screen or around a table/room), watching rented movies, or similar. (That's from many, *many* nights together in college; some of us would have a particularly tasty drink at dinner, but there was no real interest otherwise.)
The other scenario is like a marketing description of an adult alcoholic that has the classic signs of drinking alone and using alcohol to cope with regular life stresses or painful emotions. There were many other little aspects of that piece that set off red flags in the back of my head as well, like the emotional reaction to the alcohol.
I've seen part of the harsh reality through being in a past LTR with somebody that drank just like that, dealt with his alcohol/need-induced mood swings, and was hurt way too much by the kind of things he said or did before, during and after a drinking night. To be honest, thinking about the kind of mental images your passage brought to mind makes me feel sick to my stomach. :-/
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday April 20 2014, @02:27AM
Good point. And I was wondering about open container laws and opened packets...
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1) by theronb on Sunday April 20 2014, @02:37AM
All kinds of applications for this, especially considering it is sweet - replacing powdered sugar on donuts, in place of sugar on your morning cereal, no more having to gag down that first drink in the AM for the hair of the dog.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 20 2014, @12:25AM
is too busy restricting relatively harmless substances like Stevia and naturally occurring, unadulterated, red yeast rice.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jasassin on Sunday April 20 2014, @12:27AM
Too many stupid people will die. You know they'll snort it, you know they will. I'll give it ten or twenty deaths and this will be off the market.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 20 2014, @01:10AM
This right here.
I give it 6 months max.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Bartman12345 on Sunday April 20 2014, @04:15AM
According to TFA you would have to snort half a cup of this powder to get the equivalent of one drink into your system. Sounds to me like they've got the problem of snorting solved...
(Score: 1) by Twike on Sunday April 20 2014, @05:39PM
I wonder about that. If it takes half a cup of the powder to "get the equivalent of one drink into your system" then that means a packet which is the equivalent of one drink when mixed with 5 oz liquid contains half a cup of powder.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 20 2014, @06:10PM
Alcohol up your nose may be a different experience from alcohol down your throat.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 20 2014, @10:53PM
You think they calculated with a medical-grade centrifuge in mind? Don't think so either.
(Score: 5, Funny) by d(++)b on Sunday April 20 2014, @12:47AM
It's amazingly simple... just add vodka to the powdered product and Bob's your inebriated uncle!
(Score: 2) by jmoschner on Sunday April 20 2014, @01:45AM
I'm actually curious what they are using to bind the ethanol (and presumably the various other chemicals that provide flavor) and how that is liberated once it is injested (or snorted).
(Score: 5, Informative) by hamsterdan on Sunday April 20 2014, @02:01AM
Easy... powdered water.
(Score: 5, Informative) by randmcnatt on Sunday April 20 2014, @02:23AM
The Wright brothers were not the first to fly: they were the first to land.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday April 20 2014, @10:51AM
They're always after me lucky charms...
and Trix are for kids!...booze hound kids!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1) by opinionated_science on Sunday April 20 2014, @02:00PM
thanks. I was about to go hunting into how they kept the hydroxl active...
Depending on the efficiency of the suspension(?) process there might be experimental research uses for this...
(Score: 1) by NickM on Sunday April 20 2014, @07:48PM
Wow, it is sad to see how much patents quality has gone down hill.
In less than 4 full pages it describe the process well enough that you can figure how to do it on your own!
And then, it move even further away from the crap the pass as patents today by garnishing the conclusion it with cocktails instructions !!!
I a master of typographic, grammatical and miscellaneous errors !
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday April 21 2014, @02:20PM
I want to know about the flammability, if I can pack it in my camping backpack more conveniently than sterno or the usual solid fuels.
I have a perfectly good liquid ethanol stove, and I've used jellied alcohol (sterno) and the solid fuels ranging from the .mil stuff to obvious charcoal. I wonder if powder would make a good camping fuel.
(Score: 2) by Boxzy on Monday April 21 2014, @06:01PM
Con Artists repackaging this powder as a fuel additive in 5..4..3..
Go green, Go Soylent.