Not sure how this got approved by the US regulatory committee (probably via a fat backhand bribe to whoever was overseeing it) but a company named Palcohol (wonder how long it took them to come up with that name?) is releasing a new product which can best be described as powdered alcohol.
Palcohol is basically sold as a powder – and comes in a bunch of different flavours including margarita, mojito, cosmopolitan, and lemon drop flavours – that comes in a packet about as big as a sachet of sugar and contains the equivalent of a shot of vodka or rum. Just add water and wahey, you’ve got an alcoholic drink. Surely this sounds like it could be one of the best products ever – especially if you’re an underage drinker – because it would make it so easy to get trashed, and I imagine it would probably be a lot cheaper too.
This whole situation is incredibly strange because of the United States’ notoriously strict laws on drinking, because Palcohol effectively makes it way harder to pick someone up for underage drinking/drinking on the street. People can just carry it around in their pockets, and when they wanna get fucked up just put it in a bottle of water and walk around drinking that, and everybody else is none the wiser. It also doesn’t have an odour either so nobody will be able to tell, aside from the fact you would be a teenager walking around on the street with a bottle of ‘water’ acting completely and utterly trashed.
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The original website for Palcohol actually actively encouraged children and teenagers to do really irresponsible and stupid (or fun) things with the powder, including the following:
1) Sneaking it into sporting events and cinemas (alcohol is banned at most of these in America)
2) Pouring the powder directly onto food so you don’t even have the burning taste of alcohol and will still get completely fucked up off it.
3) This is the most fucked up – they actually suggest snorting the powder as this can get you even drunker than just dissolving it and using it that way. Apparently you’ll be drunk almost instantly because your nose absorbs the alcohol way quicker than any other part of your body. They say that this is a bad idea and you will get completely trashed off it, but they’re also saying it’s safe to do on their website which is a bit of a fugazi.
In any case it seems like Palcohol is marketing itself towards people who can’t drink legally or for people who want to drink in places where they’re not supposed to be drinking – I mean their tagline is even the supremely cringeworthy ‘take your pal wherever you go.’ Ewww.
The original website has now been updated unfortunately to be slightly more responsible in its wording now that the whole Palcohol thing has blown up – they claim the original was just an experimental site that they were messing around and using some ‘edgy’ ideas on in an attempt to figure out how best to market the product. I guess this might be correct but it’s also kind of weird. To be honest though it definitely seems like it’s a cheaper and more secret alcoholic option, and people will definitely be using it for the activities suggested, although for obvious reasons Palcohol can’t endorse them – which is why it’s even weirder that they ‘tried out’ the ideas on the site at all. Real strange.
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Now, I’m sure I would love this if I was a speccy teenager trying to get wasted in Oklahoma, but as a slightly older guy now I’ve got to question the ethics and ideas behind this and whether it is actually a good idea or not. For about one second that is, because who am I kidding I would have loved this stuff to have been around back in the day, and will probably even like it now. I’ll at least try it out when (if) it becomes available over here – I mean the whole snorting option sounds next level.
There are however a few hurdles to it becoming readily available in the United States still, despite the fact that the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) has approved the powdered alcohol. Retailers and wholesalers have to get on board, and there are the various state legislatures that will need to approve its sale and if you know anything about America then you know its unlikely that it’ll be approved for sale in every state any time soon.
There are also those companies that have a vested interest in keeping it off the streets i.e. every other alcoholic beverage ever who are going to fight against its release, but despite this Palcohol thinks that it’s going to be on sale in some states by the autumn. We can only hope that it finds it was over here shortly afterwards because it sounds like a product that could pretty much revolutionise life as we know it.
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