The U.S. Government Allows Cocaine Sales. (Present)

Imagine your brain is the Starship Enterprise, and dopamine is clones of Captain Kirk. Now imagine Captain Kirk makes the environment outside the Starship Enterprise feel like a place where you are always winning and happy and like you're basically the shit. Now imagine the Captain Kirk clones want to go back into their cozy spaceship, and they ask Scotty to beam them back up. But something's wrong! The door is blocked by Cocaine, and the Captain Kirk clones have no choice but to loiter outside. Simultaneously, the Starship Enterprise just keeps releasing more Captain Kirk clones because that's what it does in this analogy. So, you end up with a huge gaggle of Captain Kirks outside, and they're all adding a good dose of "winning happy you're-the-shit" feelings to the atmosphere. Well, that's how cocaine works. Understand? If not, check out the short and handy video below that explains it much more boringly (yet effectively).

There's only one entity in the United States that can legally purchase coca leaves, and there's only one entity that can manufacture purified cocaine from them. And, surprise surprise, these two entities share a very symbiotic existence with each other. And Coca-Cola.

Mallinckrodt Incorporated is a St. Louis-based pharmaceutical manufacturer that receives its cocaine from Illinois-based Stephan Company's New Jersey manufacturing plant (you may now commence your onslaught of New Jersey jokes). Stephan Company imports and processes over 385,000 pounds of coca leaves for its client, Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola uses ingredients from the coca leaves (right) for flavoring, but the good stuff isn't a part of the beverage's recipe. Waste makes haste in the form of mad amounts of good old cocaine for Mallinckrodt, who then purifies it for medicinal use.

How does one go about removing cocaine from a coca leaf, you ask? Well, if you're a seedy drug lord, you douse that shit in kerosene, percolate the cocaine out, evaporate the kerosene, and presto! Cocaine for those hungry masses. Stephan uses a slightly more elaborate procedure to process the coca leaves it uses for Coca-Cola: 1) Grind up coca leaves; 2) Mix with sawdust; 3) Soak in bicarbonate of soda; 4) Filter with toluene; 5) Steam blast 6) Mix with powdered Kola nuts; and 7) Pasteurize.

All that work for a refreshing glass of empty calories, and if you're lucky, perhaps a nice case of Type 2 diabetes. But, if you're really lucky, maybe you'll get a little taste of the Mallinckrodt government-OK'd purified cocaine, and go on to have a very good time filled with animated conversations, a lack of over-eating, and maybe even a little bit of good deep house cleaning when you just can't fall asleep.