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COCAINE IS A HELLUVA ... DRINK?: New high-energy beverage actually named after the illegal drug; protests planned in Los Angeles.
*Last week, talk show host Ellen Degeneres showed her audience a shiny new can of “Cocaine” – the latest addition to the high-energy drink market – and swore over and over that the beverage wasn’t a joke the show had made up. Turns out, she wasn’t kidding.
Sold only in Los Angeles and New York as of now, the drink is being billed by its creator Jamie Kirby as a "legal alternative" to the drug of the same name, reports London’s “Daily Mail,” and marketed to teens as "a bit of fun."
"It's an energy drink, and it's a fun name. As soon as people look at the can, they smile," Kirby said, adding that Cocaine is "350 percent stronger than Red Bull" but that people do not experience the "sugar crash" or jittery behavior that he says some of the other energy drinks can produce.
Las Vegas-based Redux Beverages is behind the drink, which contains 280 milligrams of caffeine. According to the company's website, the only way to get more caffeine per ounce is with an espresso.
Cue Najee Ali and his coalition of community leaders in Los Angeles, who are calling for a national boycott of the drink and have pledged to “shut down any store or business in South L.A. that attempts to sell the Cocaine drink.”
"Cocaine use has killed, imprisoned, torn apart and devastated countless members of our community,” says Ali in a statement. “The Cocaine energy drink will have a terrible impact on impressionable children. We let rapper Nelly’s Pimp Juice energy drink in the community without enough protest and now Cocaine energy drink owners think they can come in also. We have to be prepared to fight this Cocaine drink by any means necessary!”
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Najee Ali
Ali, executive director of Project Islamic H.O.P.E., is scheduled to hold a press conference at 11 a.m. today in Leimert Park at 3415 W.43rd Place (Crenshaw & Vernon).
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