Powdered Alcohol gets Fed Approval. Can this end well?

The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau has approved the labeling for Powdered Alcohol, clearing the way for retail sales in those states that are still allowing for it. Some states have already passed legislation banning powdered alcohol sales. Others are considering it.

The idea that powdered alcohol is a good thing is debatable at many levels. It is, after all, still alcohol. It makes drunks, and drunks make bad decisions. But what impressed me was the nonchalance with which this happened. Fix the labeling of the non-alcohol ingredients, and it's OK to put this out there. The agency even acknowledged that there might be other issues - but that they are powerless to address them. Meaning - they know this product will cause problems - but they have the paperwork that proves that they have no liability for those problems. Hands washed of responsibility.

In a day and age when alcohol use and abuse are responsible for so much of what is ugly and broken around us - is this what our government agencies should be doing - keeping us safe from mislabeled non alcoholic ingredients in a mix to which one only need add water to create an instant asshat?

consumerist.com...

a reply to: cronemel

Powered or powder?

a reply to: thesaneone

GAH!!! Powdered of course. Smacks head. THANKS!!!!

a reply to: cronemel

I knew what you meant it should be easy to change.

I agree that powder alcohol is a extremely dumb thing to market and I will bet that we see lots of stories on how idiots are dying from snorting it.

Alcohol burns, so would powdered alcohol be like an explosive?

How long before people are snorting it!

Sounds dangerous as hell.
You know that kids will snort it and die.

Crazy how something potentially dangerous passes, but it's so hard for Mary Jane to be accepted

Powdered alcohol.. lol.

The majority of the reporting on powdered alcohol seemed to report this as alchemy. That is there was some magic that could be performed on alcohol that would transform it into 'powdered alcohol' rather than what was actually going on here, which is basically absorbing alcohol on a powdered matrix.

I believe we had this already back in the late 70's, or so I was told
Quaaludes

They should stop this before it begins. Bad news for everyone except the companies that produce/sell it. Alcohol is already abused on such a high level - like coc aine and crack - both are bad, but crack can turn a cokehead into something even worse

a reply to: o0oTOPCATo0o
To the defense of powdered alcohol. You will need to be 21 to buy it. Kids cant go to the store and buy it. I understand kids can get alcohol also but it wont be handed to kids by the stores. I don't think its any more dangerous than alcohol unless it is explosive. Kids will snort anything, I don't think we should ban everything that is powdered so kids wont snort it and die. It would burn if you tried

I think some pharmaceuticals should be banned and are more dangerous. They can be crushed into powder as well

originally posted by: cronemel
The idea that powdered alcohol is a good thing is debatable at many levels. It is, after all, still alcohol. It makes drunks, and drunks make bad decisions. But what impressed me was the nonchalance with which this happened.
[snip]
In a day and age when alcohol use and abuse are responsible for so much of what is ugly and broken around us - is this what our government agencies should be doing - keeping us safe from mislabeled non alcoholic ingredients in a mix to which one only need add water to create an instant asshat?

consumerist.com...

Does it make me a bad person for considering this as a good business opportunity? lol
I mean, my first immediate thought was to check the list of states where it is banned to see if mine was.

My second thought was that it wasn't banned here, and I wondered where it is sold locally. If the approval is so new that no one has started selling it yet, I wonder who will.

Will it be at the ABC store, what about gas stations? You'd think that it could only be sold where strong liquor can be sold, since it is of the same proof, which would cancel out gas stations.

But not bars!

Enter... "The Powder Bar"

A trendy little hole in the wall "bar" where no actual liquor is sold, but only powdered alcohol. Think of it like a "hookah bar", where they rent hookahs to people while there, and people buy the shisha to load the hookahs with. You're not allowed to just show up with your own "unknown" blend of shisha, you have to buy it there and use it there, at least the one I am thinking of is like that. You can buy a pack of shisha, rent a hookah, smoke off of the pack, and then take the rest home with you when you leave b/c you bought it. But you can't just show up with your own pack and start smoking in the bar for free (they don't know what you might have mixed in it, or if it'd be harmful to other guests). Cigarettes are a compromise, and are allowed, but that's besides the point.

Now just replace the shisha with powdered alcohol. You can buy it by the drink, or by the "shot" in a powdered form that you can lick, throw in your mouth, put on your fingers, whatever. Even make a trendy orchestration out of the bartenders pouring the powder into a mixed drink for you and you tell them what flavors you want (like snow cones or ice cream shops). But you aren't allowed to sniff it up your nose, and you aren't allowed to buy big packs of it and just sit there and get wasted. It'd be controlled heavily in the same manner as shots of liquor and mixed drinks are at bars: you will get cut off by the staff, and let's say there's a "soft limit" on how many "shots" of the stuff they're willing to sell one person at the bar within one evening.

It'd be a real PITA to control, but do you know how trendy this crap would be in a college, or even military area? I have lots of colleges and military based within the metropolitan area i'm in.

Advertise it almost like a dance club, but not .. like one of those real trendy bars at the ocean front. You know, like the ones that sell hits of "pure" oxygen? lol. They're probably already doing it at the beach, but I'm talking more in a town or city.

Now THAT place would get a bad rep, lol. The police wouldn't like it at all, especially in a smaller city. you'd need a couple of doormen/bouncer types for sure.

What's next? suppositories.

this is really a non-issue. The entire concept is to remove the water from alcoholic beverages and put it in lightweight packages. It takes a lot of powder to sorb the liquid alcohol; that is what this is, absolute alcohol adsorbed into a powder saving the weight of the water which is roughly 50-60% of the weight of hard liquor. Think cat litter with alcohol in it only instead of a zeolite, think a high surface area edible sugar or starch.
One package has about a shot of liquor in it. Snorting enough to get drunk would take quite a while, if it could be done at all. Snorting 200 proof ethanol would burn the nasal cavities of those who tried it. The stuff can't be cheap, so boozers would likely not buy it in bulk. The local gin mills would have it as a novelty until everyone who cared had tried it. Mainly it is a convenient package that weighs about half of what an equivalent amount of bottled liquor weighs. I don't see a big market share for this stuff other than as a novelty, much like freeze dried ice cream hasn't damaged the ice cream market. Palcohol thinks they have an airline market. Are airplanes carrying so much booze that saving half the weight would offset the cost differential of Palcohol? Does everyone want a mixed drink with a little umbrella in it? Does every camper or hiker want a drink at the end of the day? What are they doing now and would a few ounces saved make a difference?
I wouldn't buy stock in the company.

a reply to: pteridine

I think the most important factor will be how good it tastes when you make a drink out of it.

Will it have the exact same taste as vodka? Will it taste cleaner, easier to swallow? Less burn, more burn, no burn?

In order for it to last it would need something other than initial trendiness though. You could make a quick buck off of it but that's about it.

originally posted by: WakeUpBeer
Powdered alcohol.. lol.

The majority of the reporting on powdered alcohol seemed to report this as alchemy. That is there was some magic that could be performed on alcohol that would transform it into 'powdered alcohol' rather than what was actually going on here, which is basically absorbing alcohol on a powdered matrix.

Most people need to watch this before commenting.

Thank you for the informative video.

originally posted by: stosh64

Most people need to watch this before commenting.

I watched half of the video. I stopped it because it is one-sided. It was kinda irritating when they kept saying it was "dumb" before explaining why first. I like to see both views before I decide, not a video deciding for me.

a reply to: stosh64

Agreed, very informative.

originally posted by: VoidHawk
Alcohol burns, so would powdered alcohol be like an explosive?

How long before people are snorting it!

Not likely.

The dosage or amount to get drunk takes way too much. Alcohol is actually a very low powered drug by volume. Probably one of the weaker ones. It takes several ounces of pure alcohol to get drunk.

Other drugs, however, might take .25 grams, which is one reason among many they can be snorted.

Patent link for information on the process: www.google.com...

originally posted by: cronemel
Can this end well?

No, but it sure can start off phenomenal.