#palcohol

“(Health officials) fear that people will add the powder to their cocktails to increase the alcohol content, raising the alcohol level to a dangerous degree,” wrote Hiyaguha Cohen in a panicky entry on the Baseline of Health Foundation blog. “They also worry about the potential for spiking drinks on the sly.”

Cohen also is concerned some people, especially teens, might consider snorting the product or injecting it into their veins.

The Illinois politician who sponsored the legislation made a similar argument.

State Sen. Ira Silverstein, D-Chicago, told the Associated Press he was worried it could be used to drug someone or be sprinkled surreptitiously on someone’s food.

But anyone who is familiar with the product would know that all of these claims are overblown.

Palcohol, the only powdered alcohol product approved for distribution in the United States, contains a total of 29 grams of powder. The alcohol content is roughly equivalent to one standard shot of liquor, like vodka or rum. When it’s mixed with the proper amount of water you end up with a six-ounce drink that is 10 percent alcohol.

To snort 29 grams of the substance would take about 60 minutes and would give the user the equivalent buzz of one shot of vodka, according to Palcohol creator Mark Phillips. It seems highly unlikely that someone would go through that much trouble for such a little effect.

To get a visual representation of just how much powder 29 grams actually is check out this video from Wired Magazine: http://bit.ly/1MiZ0Q8

Similarly, to inject the product you would need to reconstitute it to liquid form by mixing it with water. Why would you waste the time doing that when you have alcohol already in liquid form that is readily available?

The same thing goes for spiking a drink.

Twenty nine grams is a significantly larger volume than a shot of alcohol. So you have to carry more powdered alcohol than the liquid form to spike a drink. It also can take up to five minutes of stirring to dissolve and alters the color of the original liquid.

So using powdered alcohol to spike a drink is, again, completely impractical when liquid alcohol is more widely available and incorporates in the original drink almost instantly and isn’t visibly detectable.

So where does all of the confusion come from?

It seems to stem from a misunderstanding of what powdered alcohol is and how it is made.

People, like those who believe it could be sprinkled on food to get someone drunk, don’t understand the process. They seem to assume that making powdered alcohol creates a more concentrated version. But, in fact, powdered alcohol is a diluted form of alcohol.

To create it, a high proof liquor is mixed with a highly absorbent powder like cyclodextrin or maltodextrin extracted from starches in tapioca.

An article in Popular Science explains the process more thoroughly here:http://bit.ly/1mt2wcI

When you mix the alcohol with the powder you end up with a product that has a lower alcohol percentage than the liquor that was originally used.

Again, it would take 29 grams to incorporate the same amount of alcohol as a single shot of liquor. That’s a lot more than a sprinkle and would be noticed both visibly and in the taste of the food.

So it remains true that powdered alcohol is actually less dangerous than the liquid form in almost every regard. Liquid spirits are more concentrated, easier to conceal, more conducive to abuse and more easily used to up the alcohol content in a drink.

But hikers and campers are going to be strapped with carrying around heavy glass bottles instead of packets of powdered alcohol for the indefinite future in Illinois.

Let’s hope the legislature does some research next time before banning a product they don’t understand.