Red Bull Cola cocaine ban
Wednesday June 3, 2009 - Email this article to a friend

It’s been taken off the shelves after tests by food regulation officials said it had coca plant leaf extract in it and should therefore be classified as a class A drug.

The Coca leaf is used as a flavouring in many drinks and foods but the active ingredients of the drug that becomes cocaine has been taken out.

In these tests the drug was found.

The Health Officials are quick to point out that the levels of the drug do not pose a threat to health but are simply not permitted in foodstuffs.

In neighbouring Austria sales of the drink have quadrupled since it has been taken off the shelves in Germany.  Nightclubs and bars are reported to be running out of stock.

And more drinkers are apparently asking for Red Bull in mixed drinks too.

5 German states - Lower Saxony, Thuringia, Rhineland Palatinate, Hesse and North Rhine Westphalia - have banned the drink.  The states contain half of Germany's population.

The illegal cocaine alkaloid, one of 10 found in coca and representing only 0.8% of the plant's chemical make-up, is chemically removed before use as required under international regulations.

"There is no scientific basis for this ban on Red Bull Cola because the levels of cocaine found are so small," Fritz Soergel, the head of the Institute for Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Research in Nuremberg, Bavaria, told Time magazine.

"And it's not even cocaine itself. According to the tests we carried out, it's a non-active degradation product with no effect on the body. If you start examining lots of other drinks and food so carefully, you'd find a lot of surprising things."

But the authorities in Germay said the presence of coca leaf extracts meant the cola could not be classified as a foodstuff but as a narcotic, which would require a special licence.

When Coca-Cola was first produced in the 19th Century, it famously contained traces of cocaine, but has not since 1903.

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