The New Jersey factory that imports cocaine plants to flavor Coca-Cola

Guess you really can’t beat the real thing. Coca-Cola gets its iconic taste thanks in part to a chemical processing factory in a sleepy New Jersey neighborhood that has the country’s only license to import the plant used to make cocaine. The Maywood-based facility, now managed by the Stepan Company, has been processing coca leaves for the soft-drink giant for more than a century and had its license to import them renewed by the Drug Enforcement Agency earlier this year. The coca leaves are used to create a “decocainized” ingredient for the soda and the leftover byproduct is sold to the opioid manufacturing company Mallinckrodt, which uses the powder to make a numbing agent for dentists, DailyMail reported… read more >