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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 05 2015, @03:11PM
Guns won't be banned. That's just a political gibbering point that happens occasionally in response to an isolated incident involving white people shooting each other. Note that no one considers banning guns if the people involved aren't white. It's a proxy or code for how white Democrats talk about white Republicans and increase their fear of white Republicans, to prevent any sort of cross-party discourse.
Pot? Legalize? Only in a couple of stoner states. The rest of the world, that is the US, is heavily invested in the drug trade and the drug-trade-busting-trade. There's too much money involved not to have prohibition.
Oral suction circumcision? Most males in the US are circumcised, but only a tiny fraction are Jewish, and only a fraction of those have any oral contact involved, since most US Jews are not bonkers orthodox. The general attitude is that the Jews can give each other herpes via oral suction if they want, because it doesn't really affect the rest of us, and they can clean up their own practices if they want to, but we're not spending time in the legislature to deal with Jewish-only problems.