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United States Technology

Powdered Alcohol Approved By Feds, Banned By States 190

Posted by timothy from the nanny-states-plural dept.
StikyPad writes Powdered alcohol was approved for sale by the U.S. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, but that hasn't stopped several states from introducing their own legislation to ban the substance, including Alaska, Louisiana, South Carolina, Vermont, New York, Virginia, Ohio, and Iowa. The utility of powdered alcohol is said to be in weight reduction, particularly for transport on foot when hiking and camping, but lawmakers cite fears about the potential of abuse by minors and spiked drinks.
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Powdered Alcohol Approved By Feds, Banned By States More

Powdered Alcohol Approved By Feds, Banned By States

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  • Becasue... the children! (Score:3, Informative)

    by Lawrence_Bird ( 67278 ) on Thursday March 12, 2015 @05:49PM (#49245661) Homepage

    I for one am sick of the fucking children. No, its not good enough that you need to be a certain age to purchase this stuff. Nope. Must deny it to the legal adults becuase little Johnny just might snap some up while nobody is looking.

    NANNIES

    • Re:Becasue... the children! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 12, 2015 @06:04PM (#49245783)

      That's not the real reason, they don't want anyone sneaking booze into place where they'd otherwise spend money on beer and drinks. Like stadiums, concerts, etc.

      Don't believe everything a politician tells you, they get money from Bud, Coors, and Jack Daniels.

      • That's not the real reason, they don't want anyone sneaking booze into place where they'd otherwise spend money on beer and drinks. Like stadiums, concerts, etc.

        Don't believe everything a politician tells you, they get money from Bud, Coors, and Jack Daniels.

        then why don't Bud Coors and Jack Daniels just make their own branded powdered alcohol.

        • Re:Becasue... the children! (Score:4, Interesting)

          by duck_rifted ( 3480715 ) on Thursday March 12, 2015 @06:45PM (#49246101)
          Because that's not the real reason either. The bans on powdered alcohol followed stories about people doing really stupid stuff with it, like snorting it, trying to smoke it, seasoning food with it (and getting more drunk than expected, later than expected), etc etc. It's not worry about kids; it's worry about simpleton adults who like to experiment with stuff before knowing anything about it.

          In Louisiana, another reason is that the ban might create another way to arrest people. Louisiana wants as many inmates as possible for slave labor.

          • Re:Becasue... the children! (Score:4, Informative)

            by mcl630 ( 1839996 ) on Thursday March 12, 2015 @07:04PM (#49246263)

            They weren't actually stories of people doing those stupid things, the maker (Palcohol) suggested doing those things on the website:

            http://www.theverge.com/2014/4... [theverge.com]

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by slew ( 2918 )

            Because that's not the real reason either. The bans on powdered alcohol followed stories about people doing really stupid stuff with it, like snorting it, trying to smoke it, seasoning food with it (and getting more drunk than expected, later than expected), etc etc. It's not worry about kids; it's worry about simpleton adults who like to experiment with stuff before knowing anything about it.

            FWIW, all sorts of crazy stuff is already happening with cannabis edibles in Colorado. Here's the fear and loathing article [nytimes.com] that made the rounds...

            Maybe there's a good reason to pause given the public doesn't really know how to handle this stuff yet...

            • Re:Becasue... the children! (Score:5, Insightful)

              by Jane Q. Public ( 1010737 ) on Thursday March 12, 2015 @08:03PM (#49246633)

              FWIW, all sorts of crazy stuff is already happening with cannabis edibles in Colorado. Here's the fear and loathing article that made the rounds...

              Maybe there's a good reason to pause given the public doesn't really know how to handle this stuff yet...

              The former argument doesn't lead to the latter. People have been using Cannibis in its various forms for at least several hundred years. It simply isn't true that we don't know what to do with it. The information is everywhere.

              Morons will be morons, no matter what tools they use to demonstrate it. That should NOT be a restriction on the rest of us.

              • "People have been using Cannibis in its various forms for at least several hundred years."

                It dates to much longer than that. Cannabis usage in the "western" world date back to 400+ years, but in Asia minor and neighbor region it is much longer :

                The oldest written record of cannabis usage is the Greek historian Herodotus's reference to the central Eurasian Scythians taking cannabis steam baths.[40] His (c. 440 BCE) Histories records, "The Scythians, as I said, take some of this hemp-seed [presumably, flowe

          • The weird thing is I can't see much in common between the states that want to ban it. New York, Alaska, South Carolina?

            • Re:Becasue... the children! (Score:4, Interesting)

              by duck_rifted ( 3480715 ) on Friday March 13, 2015 @12:31AM (#49247673)
              There are four ban triggers that I can think of. In places with very high population density, letting people freely access stuff that not only can they do really stupid things with but probably will isn't a great idea because it will probably hurt, kill, or otherwise negatively impact more people. That makes New York an easy one.

              Louisiana is an easy one too. Most of the people in Louisiana who aren't conservatives are felons, whether they're criminals or not. It just sort of seems to end up that way here, but we can probably guess that the process has some help. When I say "conservatives," what I mean is, "either rich of deeply theocratic." It's not so much that the constituency demanded the ban as they would have been out for legislator blood the first time some stupid stuff happened and Little Johnny Farmer Baptist got hurt.

              Alaska is an easy one too. It's still mostly unsettled, and it's an effing cold place. Alcohol is a vital commodity out in the cold because it's an antiseptic, a painkiller, and it can make a person feel warm when they're not. So, two things about that. First, we can probably guess (though it isn't said) that the alcohol industry has a lot of pull in Alaska. Second, when you live in a place that can get stupidly dangerous due to natural factors that can be an everyday thing, doing more stupid stuff with chemicals is stupid^2.

              Three states, three influences. I have no idea about South Carolina, but I have one more idea about a ban trigger: constituency pressure. It would be hard to guess how much of the influence was actual pressure from voters versus anticipated pressure, but I bet it's a similar situation as in Louisiana (though probably for totally different reasons).

              If I'm right, then California will ban it after scientifically proving it's unhealthy for reasons none of us have thought of, Texas will ban it if they're paid to, Florida will ban it if the GOP says it should, and New Jersey will eventually make Powdered Alcohol Day a state holiday. Every other state will probably shrug and ignore it -- except for beverage manufacturers. You know, the only people who have a really good reason to buy the stuff to begin with.

              • South Carolina because half the counties in that state don't allow alcohol sales on a sunday.. the bible belt is so tight it's cutting off circulation there.

              • Alaska has local option for alcohol imports*. Many of the villages ban it, but many still see a steady flow of booze. It would be impossible to control alcohol movement into villages if it could be smuggled in small sachets.

                I'm not trying to run down that Alaska is dangerous, as I've certainly known people maimed or killed by cold or bears.

                *For many of the villages, anything they don't make or harvest locally is brought in by barge, plane or barter with other villages 10s of miles away by trails. Much of

          • I don't see them banning liquid alcohol because some raging jackasses inject it and suitcase it.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by cptdondo ( 59460 )

            But the maker has added bulking agents. You'd have to snort a lot - and I mean a lot - to make anything happen. No doubt some idiot would try this, but really, this is a great idea who's time had come.

            I would love to take some with me on backpacking trips.

          • If it wasn't for all the additives and fillers, I'd be interested in its properties as part of a dry-cure seasoning....

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by jfengel ( 409917 )

            trying to smoke it

            HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

            I'm sorry, that's just so funny. What were they expecting?

            I'm going to have to get some of this just to see what happens when you light it. I bet it's very pretty. It's just going to be well away from my FACE when I do it.

          • we need to stop outlawing darwin awards
        • Good point. But they've spent billions on brands and convincing the public that everything in their liquids is good and necessary. However, I'm betting it's more the distributors and retailers that don't want it. They're comfortable with what they have. There probably won't be a big increase in overall alcohol sales, so anything that sells instead of traditional spirits might not go through their channels. Why take a chance? Just get the buddies in the legislature to nip it in the bud, as Barney would say.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ranton ( 36917 )

          That's not the real reason, they don't want anyone sneaking booze into place where they'd otherwise spend money on beer and drinks. Like stadiums, concerts, etc.

          Don't believe everything a politician tells you, they get money from Bud, Coors, and Jack Daniels.

          then why don't Bud Coors and Jack Daniels just make their own branded powdered alcohol.

          Because the stadiums, concerts, etc. still couldn't charge a 5x markup when the alcohol is sold at the venue.

    • Well the intended purpose seems questionable too. For hiking and camping?
      If you are hiking in a condition where weight is an issue, you need pure water to stay hydrated, even sport drinks are a bad idea. Alchol will just dehydrate you faster. Also even simple hiking trails have some places for tricky footing, even if you are a bit buzzed you can hurt yourself.

      The type of camping trips where you just sit around the fire, are also ones where you just drive up to the spot so you can just bring the heavy good s

      • Re:Becasue... the children! (Score:4, Informative)

        by cptdondo ( 59460 ) on Friday March 13, 2015 @07:06AM (#49248725) Journal

        You don't backpack much, do you? Carrying a liter of alcohol in a backpack is a huge weight, no matter what condition you're in. The less weight you have, the more fun it is.

        And yes, most of use use some sort of poowdered sports drink, often to hide the taste of the water we get from streams and lakes, even after filtering.

        As a backpacker I really support this. There's nothing like sitting arond dinner at night, nad having a drink under the stars.

        • Re:Becasue... the children! (Score:4, Informative)

          by Jon_S ( 15368 ) on Friday March 13, 2015 @09:51AM (#49249849)

          You carry the same amount of alcohol whether you carry the dehydrated stuff or a bottle of grain alcohol. Actually, the dehydrated stuff is heavier since you also are carrying the polysaccharide to which the alcohol is adsorbed.

          If you want to get drunk in the woods, you need the millions of molecules of C2H5OH which weighs the same no matter if you bring it in pure (well, the 95% azeotrope probably) or adsorbed to sugar.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by cptdondo ( 59460 )

            True. Everclear, however, is illegal in many jurisdictions. it's hard to get anything more than about 100 proof. Then there are the handling issues and the waste - ethanol is flammable, and you have to pack out the bottle/plastic jug.

            It would really be interesting to see this for real.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by jfengel ( 409917 )

            I've been thinking of doing some backpacking, and had been wondering it if was a good idea to carry some everclear with me. Pleasantly relaxing taken orally (with water), and useful externally (especially when the internals accidentally become external).

            Question: can it also be used to make the water safer? If I were to mix it up as, say, a beer-grade solution (4%), would it be a more enjoyable alternative to filters and chlorine? (Googling has been less than useful; most of what I get is the fact that you

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jafiwam ( 310805 )

        Well the intended purpose seems questionable too. For hiking and camping? If you are hiking in a condition where weight is an issue, you need pure water to stay hydrated, even sport drinks are a bad idea. Alchol will just dehydrate you faster. Also even simple hiking trails have some places for tricky footing, even if you are a bit buzzed you can hurt yourself.

        The type of camping trips where you just sit around the fire, are also ones where you just drive up to the spot so you can just bring the heavy good stuff.

        If they can come up with a more practical explanation then hiking and camping, then I can see states opening it up. Otherwise it is just an excuse to sell a product and have people look the other way while they sneak it to places where you should need a drink.

        When they come up with a filter that can filter alcohol out of a stream or standing water, your complaint will be valid.

        H2O as a compound, is all over the damn place and can be treated at a camp site.

        Alcohol isn't.

        You don't know shit about camping OR hiking.

  • Following instructions? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thieh ( 3654731 ) on Thursday March 12, 2015 @05:49PM (#49245663)
    I wonder how many people will actually follow the instructions in mixing these things back to booze. Somehow I am inclined to believe people do not want to follow the instructions and swallow the stuff with as little water as physically possible.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday March 12, 2015 @05:51PM (#49245681)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Following instructions? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Ralph Siegler ( 3506871 ) on Thursday March 12, 2015 @06:03PM (#49245781)
      it's just a polysaccharide with alcohol in it, the particular one they use can absorb 60% its weight in alcohol. You're still going to only get the alcohol of a standard drink whether you eat the starchy stuff straight up or put it in a quart of water.

      • "You're still going to only get the alcohol of a standard drink whether you eat the starchy stuff straight up or put it in a quart of water."

        Only if you consume the starchy stuff at a rate as slow as consuming the amount of water you are intended to put it in.

        • Only if you consume the starchy stuff at a rate as slow as consuming the amount of water you are intended to put it in

          Possibly but likely not. The problem or possible stumbling block is that the body doesn't take up the alcohol equally and has gag reflexes if too much is detected. I'm not aware of this powdered stuff defeating any of that.

          Anyways, the stomach is very poor in absorbing alcohol where the intestines are much more efficiency. I forget the actually percent, but I believe its 80% or better of the

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by erice ( 13380 )

        it's just a polysaccharide with alcohol in it, the particular one they use can absorb 60% its weight in alcohol

        So, how is this helpful for anything? If you want concentrated alcohol just do that. Sure, it's still liquid but it weighs 40% less than this powder and lightweight containment of liquids is a solved problem.

        Sure, it might not taste good but reports are that the powder taste pretty bad too and involves otherwise unnecessary ingestion of questionable chemicals.

        It looks to me like the only purpose is to make an end-run around liquor control laws. I'm sure the manufacturers banked on not paying the usual al

        • What questionable chemicals? The polysaccharide is a bunch of glucose stuck together. You can find recipes for the "powdered alchohol" on the web, by the way. Maltodextrin (which is doubtless what they're using) is used in various recipes for absorbing fats, for example. Just happens to also absorb booze.

    • Make Pixie sticks out of them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Mjlner ( 609829 )

      I wonder how many people will actually follow the instructions in mixing these things back to booze. Somehow I am inclined to believe people will ignore the instructions and will swallow the stuff with as little water as physically possible.

      There... FTFY!

  • Spiked drinks? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Thursday March 12, 2015 @06:09PM (#49245827) Homepage
    How exactly are you supposed to stick this thing in someone's non-alcoholic drink and them not notice the taste? Or are they talking about adding more alcohol to my martini - in which case, yes please.

    They only people that need to worry about this are the teachers at a high school dance. And we all know how effective they are at stopping kids from drinking....

    • How exactly are you supposed to stick this thing in someone's non-alcoholic drink and them not notice the taste?

      Isn't it part of the "powdered aclohol" thing that there isn't any flavour included? And hiding the taste of alcohol itself is easy: sugar. (That's why it's so easy to start your drinking career with Alcopops or Apfelkorn) Try for yourself: Mix Vodka (or Korn) and sugared Ice Tea. Even at 1:1 ratio you won't be able to taste any alcohol. Despite jugging down something with 25% pure alcohol content.

      Someone once hammered really bad with that drink. I knew what I was drinking, but had no idea of how much alcoh

    • LOL. I initially thought you were talking about teachers drinking at a high school dance...

    • I have fairly sedate friends, but one got into overdose territory at a party where somebody kept spiking his drinks. He was drinking responsibly and keeping track of how many drinks towards his limit, and didn't realize he was exceeding it.

  • Marketing Hype. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by painandgreed ( 692585 ) on Thursday March 12, 2015 @06:21PM (#49245911)

    You could get even lighter and easier transportability by taking Everclear or some other near 200 proof alcohol and adding flavoring to add to your water. Palcohol is just the same thing that is bound to a powder, most likely tapioca maltodextrin. Similar process is already used in some cooking recipes. You can already make it yourself. It's not some neat way to make alcohol any lighter or more compact.

  • Hopefully they won't ban it - I think the concept is pretty darn cool, and had been looking forward to trying it since I heard about the company like a year ago. I really don't see what all the fuss is about - safety-wise it doesn't really do anything you can't already do with regular booze.

    I am academically curious whether you could get drunk by consuming it in capsule form, or if it *has* to be dissolved to work.

    • Hopefully they won't ban it - I think the concept is pretty darn cool, and had been looking forward to trying it since I heard about the company like a year ago.

      I've been hearing about it since college (which was farther back than I care to admit). If you want to try it just google "make powdered alcohol" and look up the recipe. It's going to tell you to go on Amazon, buy some tapioca maltodextrin and some Everclear, mix, and sift. Ta da! Powdered alcohol. Experiment to your heart's content.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by neminem ( 561346 )

        Thanks! I'm probably going to be way too lazy to actually do that, but still, that is useful information, I thought it would have been a way more chemistry-magic-ful process than that, given how hush-hush they've been. :p

  • Can you get this in concentrated form? (Score:3)

    by ChumpusRex2003 ( 726306 ) on Thursday March 12, 2015 @07:10PM (#49246299)
    Never mind the powdered form, what about getting the liquid in concentrated form?

    "Palcohol" is not ethanol, but the highly intoxicating 2-methyl, 2-butanol, which is about 30x as potent at causing intoxication as ethanol. Despite being termed one of the "toxic alcohols", it probably has lower chronic toxicity than ethanol, as being a tertiary alcohol, it cannot be oxidised to toxic aldehydes/ketones.

    • "Palcohol" is not ethanol, but the highly intoxicating 2-methyl, 2-butanol, which is about 30x as potent at causing intoxication as ethanol. Despite being termed one of the "toxic alcohols", it probably has lower chronic toxicity than ethanol, as being a tertiary alcohol, it cannot be oxidised to toxic aldehydes/ketones.

      Seriously? Traditionally, powdered alcohol has been made by trapping ethanol inside cyclodextrins. Why would anyone produce a non-ethanol based powdered alcohol when there are much safer alternatives already known and understood. Oh, wait... because the pre-existing method is out of patent, and they want patent protection... right?

      • It is possible to sorb ethanol into a dextrin. The problem is that the volume/mass of sorbent is much larger than the amount of alcohol that can be bound.

        So, if you want to bind 10 ml of ethanol (approximately 1 shot), then you may need 100 grams of powder. Which makes the product of limited value.

        If, however, you want something iso-intoxicating to 10 ml of ethanol, you can reasonably safely do that with about 500 ul of 2-methyl, 2-butanol, which could be sorbed in 5 grams of powder. The latter is a p

        • Reports claim the right sugars will absorb ethyl alcohol to 60% of their own weight. Your 10ml of ethanol is 7.89g, and multiplying that by 10/6 gives 13.15g of sugar needed. This is clearly why it only makes sense as a premixed cocktail -- no spirits have that sort of ratio of sugar to alcohol.

          It still sounds interesting as a drycure ingredient.

          • It still sounds interesting as a drycure ingredient.

            Ooops. I hadn't thought about the volatility of alcohol. Turns out sugar-encapsulated alcohol evaporates very, very easily.

  • Want to snort a line of Scotch?

  • Pat Traver's said it best (Score:3)

    by Archfeld ( 6757 ) * <treboreel@live.com> on Friday March 13, 2015 @12:32AM (#49247677) Journal

    Now I can finally snort whiskey and drink coke...

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... [wikipedia.org] (Pat Travers Band)

  • I have a recipe for powdered alcohol:
    - 15 g dry yeast
    - 5 kg sugar

    To use it:
    1) Mix with 20 litres of water in sufficiantly large container.
    2) Flavour according to taste (optional)
    3) Cover but do not seal. For optimal results, use airlock.
    4) Keep in room temperature for 1-2 weeks.

    Enjoy!

  • ... for open container laws?

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