The McDonald's Cocaine Spoon Fiasco
September 19, 2014 4:40 AM   Subscribe

 
Wow, that's crazy.
posted by dejah420 at 4:52 AM on September 19, 2014 [1 favorite]


And that, children, is how we won the War on Drugs. And everyone lived happily ever after.
posted by GrammarMoses at 4:55 AM on September 19, 2014 [45 favorites]


Mission Accomplished.
posted by fairmettle at 4:58 AM on September 19, 2014 [2 favorites]


Hey, I remember these! Quite well, actually.

The seventies are little more blurry, though.
posted by Benny Andajetz at 5:02 AM on September 19, 2014 [4 favorites]


Wow. I always thought this was an urban legend.
posted by briank at 5:11 AM on September 19, 2014 [1 favorite]


When future archeologists start digging up our vast middens (aka landfills), these will be one of the items that helps them to date the layers.

I remember them too. Never had any idea they were associated with cocaine. I'm glad we solved that problem, thereby depriving cocaine dealers and users of any way to measure or ingest their product, forever.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 5:13 AM on September 19, 2014 [11 favorites]


Jesucristo, 11% of adults in 1979 were using cocaine? It looks like that number stayed reasonably stable through the early 1980s. This explains just about everything.
posted by uncleozzy at 5:15 AM on September 19, 2014 [29 favorites]


In the early seventies, my father, who owned a music store, was selling metal kazoos like crazy. Couldn't keep them in stock. Finally someone explained to him that they were ideal for smoking pot. Interestingly, they don't play nearly as well as the plastic ones, which sell for a fraction of the cost!
posted by jabah at 5:16 AM on September 19, 2014 [10 favorites]


One of the explanations that I've seen cited for the bump in cocaine use in the late seventies was the success that the DEA had in eradicating Mexican marijuana crops by spraying them with paraquat. For a while, coke was comparatively cheap compared to grass.
posted by Halloween Jack at 5:22 AM on September 19, 2014 [2 favorites]


In the early seventies, my father, who owned a music store, was selling metal kazoos like crazy. Couldn't keep them in stock. Finally someone explained to him that they were ideal for smoking pot.

Never underestimate the sheer engineering ingenuity of junkies, or the willingness of people to sell them perfectly innocent socks and flowers.
posted by Etrigan at 5:26 AM on September 19, 2014 [4 favorites]


For a while, coke was comparatively cheap compared to grass

Just think, instead of the fuck-you-got-mine 80s, we could have had the hey-man-you-want-some 80s. But no.

(Although according to the data I linked above, more people were also smoking dope in 1979 than at any time since, too.)
posted by uncleozzy at 5:33 AM on September 19, 2014 [3 favorites]


In early 1980, McDonald’s redesigned and released its new coffee stirring spoon -- a much flatter one with a paddle instead of a small scooper. While the move sated anti-drug lobbyists, it did little to curb cocaine use.

That's about as succinct a description of how the war on some drugs works as I've ever seen.
posted by TedW at 5:34 AM on September 19, 2014 [70 favorites]


I was just coming to post that Etrigan.

I wonder if these will appear on the inevitable banned object list for 3D printers?
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 5:34 AM on September 19, 2014 [4 favorites]


The reason why plastic stirrer straws are bad tools is obvious: they're miniature soda straws, more or less the shape that will pass through a liquid leaving the smallest wake.

The second best coffee stirrers are those miniature wood or bamboo planklets, but I think they're unpopular because they look rough and cheap.

The best coffee stirrers are short pieces of uncooked linguine. They do the job and in wet climates you can casually chuck them into the shrubbery where they'll dissolve into fertilizer after a couple hard rains.
posted by ardgedee at 5:36 AM on September 19, 2014 [1 favorite]


It's too bad those spoons are gone. They were the perfect size for measuring out your life.
posted by Metroid Baby at 5:37 AM on September 19, 2014 [46 favorites]


They should have renamed it the "Freedom Spoon." That would have solved the problem.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 5:37 AM on September 19, 2014 [9 favorites]


Jesucristo, 11% of adults in 1979 were using cocaine?

I know, right? It was like an epide...

Never mind, forget I said anything.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 5:40 AM on September 19, 2014


I suspect there are hundreds or thousands of distinct articles that could credibly use "How U.S. drug laws destroyed the [thing essentially unrelated to drugs or drug abuse rates]" as a title.
posted by kewb at 6:02 AM on September 19, 2014 [5 favorites]


I remember both those spoons and the urban legend that they were used for cocaine. They also made good arms for the robot you made out of coffee cream cups.
posted by angerbot at 6:04 AM on September 19, 2014 [6 favorites]


one of the explanations that I've seen cited for the bump in cocaine use

I see what you did there.
posted by modernnomad at 6:11 AM on September 19, 2014 [23 favorites]


I remember these spoons but had no idea they were used to snort cocaine. Now that I've read this I have a hankering for a few lines. THANKS MCDONALDS!
posted by photoslob at 6:12 AM on September 19, 2014 [4 favorites]


I read the comments here first and was like spoons? What spoons? And then I opened the link and saw the photos and instantly remembered them, in all their plasticness with sharp molding edges. What a weird outcome of the War on Drugs.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:15 AM on September 19, 2014 [1 favorite]


Paper currency and credit cards were also both commonly-used cocaine paraphernalia, which is why money itself was banned in 1981.
posted by Western Infidels at 6:22 AM on September 19, 2014 [38 favorites]


When I'm finally Kwisatz Haderach, if you demand that somebody do something "for the children" I will teleport an angry badger right onto the top of your head.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:33 AM on September 19, 2014 [43 favorites]


I remember the spoons and the controversy very well.

It is true that in 1979 cocaine seemed to be everywhere.

There were pop songs about it (Eric Clapton by way of J. J. Cale, Jackson Brown by way of Rev. Gary Davis, Frank Zappa) and in concert musicians would even change the lyrics of songs that didn't originally mention cocaine to thunderous approval from the crowds (Jimmy Buffett, ZZ Top).

In 1979, a movie company took over the Hilton hotel where I was working for a location shoot; they stayed for months. There was never so much white powder around town as there was during those months as supply poured into town to service this increased demand. I had cast and crew members pouring out lines on my front desk. I couldn't tell you what it was like in the bar. Housekeeping probably needed respirators to avoid getting all giggly while vacuuming the guest rooms.

Nowadays, of course, with all the head shops closed and McDonalds' coffee spoons banned, the drug war is over and nobody uses drugs for 'kicks' anymore, right? Ask your doctor if Oxycontin is right for you.

I had an earlier look into how the civic-minded amateur morality cop works in symbiosis with the pusillanimous bureaucrat-politican to make life worse -- or at least sillier -- for everyone.

When I was about 12, I had a friend whose family were members of a swimming pool club. This club had a problem with unsupervised kids smearing mustard off of their pretzel sticks onto the picnic tables, greatly discommoding the seated gentry. The club's solution: Ban pretzels.
 
posted by Herodios at 6:47 AM on September 19, 2014 [11 favorites]


if you demand that somebody do something "for the children" I will teleport an angry badger right onto the top of your head.
::obligatory Wu Tang joke::

If memory serves, Ben is Dead wrote about this in one of their "Retro Hell!" issues, under the headline "coke spoon of the people".
posted by pxe2000 at 6:54 AM on September 19, 2014 [1 favorite]


cited for the bump in cocaine use in the late seventies

I'll just couple the coming of age of the Baby Boom generation and their purchasing power, desire for upward and outward mobility, the aspirational aspects of cocaine along the social rejection of marijuana and heroin.
posted by jsavimbi at 6:56 AM on September 19, 2014 [1 favorite]


They destroyed the McDonalds coke spoon. The new stirrer actually works better, as a stirrer. They're also pretty much perfect as a pointer for proof reading.
posted by StickyCarpet at 6:58 AM on September 19, 2014


Paper currency and credit cards were also both commonly-used cocaine paraphernalia, which is why money itself was banned in 1981.
In 2001 the Federal Reserve estimated that 90 percent of the $100 bills ordered by the Federal Reserve . . . were paid out to foreign banks "to satisfy foreign demand." . . . The $100 bill may be America's most successful export.

Most of the foreign Benjamins, it seems safe to assume, are in the possession of kleptocrats, drug lords, warlords, oligarchs, terrorists and assorted other varieties of extremely nasty and powerful people. It doesn't make a lot of sense to expand their supply of covert cash. . . .

So why do we keep printing $100 bills? [I]f the C-note ceased to be available to foreign criminals and dictators, another paper currency would take its place. The leading candidate would be the 500 euro note . . . nicknamed "the Bin Laden" because its compactness makes it so convenient to hide ill-gotten gains in. . . .
     -- Slate, Dec. 9 2010
posted by Herodios at 7:00 AM on September 19, 2014 [4 favorites]


Interesting. It's a shame they complied because those spoons were really nicely made objects.

It reminds me of how in South Africa weed is (or at least was in the 90s) sold not by weight but by volume, in a standard quantity called a 'bankie'. These were the logoed ziplock bags that banks gave away for people to sort and return for their collected coins, and the perfect size and cost to be repurposed by the underground drug economy.
posted by Flashman at 7:01 AM on September 19, 2014


Oh yeah, I forgot, snorting the stuff with a rolled up $100 bill was quite the thing in '79, too.

A'course $100 went farther in those days, too. Maybe not so 'impressive' now. We've advanced to pouring out $100+ / bottle champers on the ground.
 
posted by Herodios at 7:04 AM on September 19, 2014


"While the move sated anti-drug lobbyists, it did little to curb cocaine use."

(World's Softest "well, duuuuuhhh....")
posted by Jake DeNiro at 7:11 AM on September 19, 2014 [1 favorite]


These kind of drug warriors did us a valuable service when I was a teenager. My nerdy friends and I didn't have to actually acquire any drugs to be stylishly wicked. A few McDonalds coffee stirrers and a visit to the local head shop where we could purchase stickers to prove we were cool enough to go there, and we were all set for high school.
posted by elizilla at 7:16 AM on September 19, 2014 [4 favorites]


I remember those spoons--I loved those spoons, which is odd, since I don't imagine I was often near a McDonald's in the morning in the 70's. I had no idea this is what happened to them; I assumed it was some sort of cost-saving, use a cheap generic alternative measure. This is a much more sordid and fascinating tale.

I would almost certainly pay for one of those plated replicas and I am not a person who often goes for kitsch or nostalgia in my home goods purchasing decisions.
posted by crush-onastick at 7:36 AM on September 19, 2014 [2 favorites]


Interestingly, [metal kazoos] don't play nearly as well as the plastic ones, which sell for a fraction of the cost!

Balderdash.

Granted, there is very little quality control among kazoos, so quality differs drastically, even from ostensibly identical models. But, speaking broadly, you're more likely to get a nice sharp tone from a metal kazoo, and more likely to get a highly distorted one from a plastic kazoo. Both have their place, but I favor the former. More importantly: metal kazoos will typically allow you to unscrew the cap and replace the resonator, making it easier to get the sound you want; plastic kazoos are typically glued shut, so your best bet is to buy a handful and hope one of them is good enough. (There are also the really cheap plastic party-favor kazoos, but those hardly bear mentioning at all, except as a gateway membranophone.)

I may have strong feelings on this subject.
posted by Shmuel510 at 7:56 AM on September 19, 2014 [27 favorites]


Must not have been as pressing a concern in Canada as I was born in '82 and definitely remember these in my youth. Along with the plastic bibs that appeared to show Grimace giving the finger.
posted by yellowbinder at 8:04 AM on September 19, 2014 [1 favorite]


Must not have been as pressing a concern in Canada . . .
After terminating and redesigned the spoons in 1979, McDonald’s was left with millions of the old ones in storage. To rid its supply, the company continued disseminating them to its franchises abroad.
-- TFA
 
posted by Herodios at 8:12 AM on September 19, 2014


It is strange, because I also remember them from the 80s, maybe even the 90s in Canada. Could they really have had that many of these spoons in storage in 1979?
Maybe they still make/use them here; I haven't been into a McDonald's in years. It could be one of those areas where Cdn & US safety/prudery standards diverge, like with Kinder eggs, cold medicine and guns.
posted by Flashman at 8:27 AM on September 19, 2014


I wonder if these will appear on the inevitable banned object list for 3D printers?

Why? I mean, you could technically whittle a cocaine spoon if you wanted to. If people want to use 3D printers to create drug-using devices, they will either ignore a ban or tweak the design just enough that it falls outside the ban. The availability of spoons, pipes and bongs is already so great that a 3D printer is not going to change it much.
posted by emjaybee at 8:40 AM on September 19, 2014


Christ, just go to the head shop and buy a bumper already.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:46 AM on September 19, 2014 [2 favorites]


I remember these spoons! The "other countries get America's leftovers" thing makes sense, because I remember seeing them partway into the 1980s (not the 1990s though). I remember after they disappeared hearing a rumour that US drug laws were the reason--it was totally believable when I was a kid, but later as an adult I assumed it was just conspiracy theory. Who knew it was a real thing!

(The main reason I remember these is, as a child, I hated the minced onions they put on the burgers. So my mom would always use one of these little spoons to scrape them off. As a result, for a long time I believed the spoons' main purpose was to scrape the onions off the burgers.)
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 9:02 AM on September 19, 2014 [3 favorites]


TedW: "In early 1980, McDonald’s redesigned and released its new coffee stirring spoon -- a much flatter one with a paddle instead of a small scooper.

Perfect for gently slapping criminal politicians on the wrist.

posted by chavenet at 9:07 AM on September 19, 2014 [1 favorite]


When I'm finally Kwisatz Haderach, if you demand that somebody do something "for the children" I will teleport an angry badger right onto the top of your head.

With a Kwisatz Haderach, leave the kids alone,
Else I'll badger your headbone
 
posted by Herodios at 9:07 AM on September 19, 2014 [10 favorites]


Metroid Baby: "It's too bad those spoons are gone. They were the perfect size for measuring out your life."

Oh come on, Prufrock is the druggiest Eliot by far. What do you think he means when he's talking about rolling his trousers, eh?

Pipes, yellow smoke, butt-ends, squeezing the universe into a ball &c &c

So stoned. (Have you ever really looked at your claws?)
posted by chavenet at 9:13 AM on September 19, 2014 [5 favorites]


I also remember the spoons. I also used them, but only for their official purpose of stirring coffee, but I do remember the rumor/news that McD was getting rid of them because of the, uh, coke situation.
posted by freakazoid at 9:32 AM on September 19, 2014


Man, what the hell, chavenet, you ain't read no The Wasteland, you ain't know what is the trippiest Eliot any better than anybody else around here. The yellow smoke is outside bigsmoke, from factory chimneys maybe, definitely not some personal smoke from some opium pipes as you're trying to make out. It is catlike and therefore possibly intended to call to mind the Sandburg fog that comes on little cat feet. Squeezing the universe into a ball is a riff on "To His Coy Mistress." And I can't look at my claws, can I, if, as I should have been, I AM claws, scuttling on the floors of some mahfah silent seas.
posted by Don Pepino at 9:37 AM on September 19, 2014 [4 favorites]


Or maybe the Sandburg fog is supposed to recall you to the Prufrock smog, I dunno which came first. I do know neither one has anything to do with doobies.
posted by Don Pepino at 9:39 AM on September 19, 2014


I have a small box of 1960s, '70s and '80s ephemera that includes love beads, this button, joke political pins, real political pins, drug paraphernalia, and one of these spoons.
posted by caryatid at 9:41 AM on September 19, 2014 [1 favorite]


It reminds me of how in South Africa weed is (or at least was in the 90s) sold not by weight but by volume, in a standard quantity called a 'bankie'. These were the logoed ziplock bags that banks gave away for people to sort and return for their collected coins, and the perfect size and cost to be repurposed by the underground drug economy.

In early-90s Russia, weed was sold by the matchbox, or (if you were a big buyer) by the glass. Because most products were still Soviet made, there was one standard matchbox size, and one standard glass size, making them perfectly good measuring tools.
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard at 9:45 AM on September 19, 2014 [1 favorite]


next target: $100 bills
posted by bruce at 9:51 AM on September 19, 2014


Not only for cocaine. For a while I was acquainted with some low level heroin dealers. The McDonald's spoon was a treasured tool. It was the perfect size for measuring out dime bags of dope. Nobody fucked with the spoons. Nobody.
posted by Splunge at 10:01 AM on September 19, 2014 [1 favorite]


Jesucristo, 11% of adults in 1979 were using cocaine?

Okay, now I finally understand Galactica 1980.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 10:02 AM on September 19, 2014 [3 favorites]


So, this is why we can't have nice things?
posted by amtho at 10:11 AM on September 19, 2014 [2 favorites]


Jesucristo, 11% of adults in 1979 were using cocaine?

Okay, now I finally understand Galactica 1980.


Not just that but the Star Wars Holiday Special, Can't Stop the Music, and Xanadu. All the sad wages of cocaine abuse. Or so I assume.
posted by emjaybee at 10:18 AM on September 19, 2014 [1 favorite]


I would totally pay $295 for a golden coke spoon.
posted by cjorgensen at 10:29 AM on September 19, 2014


I would have lost money on a bet that they got rid of them because they could save $.03 cents/unit by switching to stirring sticks and thus save like $8 billion per year.
posted by bleep at 10:30 AM on September 19, 2014


Okay, now I finally understand Galactica the 1980's.

FTFY


snrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrf
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:36 AM on September 19, 2014


emjaybee - Can't Stop The Music might as well have been filmed on cocaine dusted nitrocellulose on a coke based spool with a side of cocaine.
posted by Sophie1 at 10:44 AM on September 19, 2014 [1 favorite]


You are a movie business guy
You got accountants who supply
The necessary figures to determine when you fly
To Acapulco
Where all your friends go

We must watch the stuff you make
You have let us eat the cake
While your accountants tell you Yes Yes Yes
You make expensive ugliness
How do you do it? Let me guess

Cocaine decisions
Cocaine decisions
Cocaine decisions
Cocaine decisions . . .

-- FZ
 
posted by Herodios at 11:57 AM on September 19, 2014 [1 favorite]


Really only 100 milligrams? I would have guessed the spoon would hold a gram or more. Is cocaine just really, really light?
posted by miyabo at 12:03 PM on September 19, 2014


I remember this at the time and also the caveat that it was a bad idea to use McDonald's coffee spoons for coke since the coke would eat the plastic spoon and you'd be snorting plastic. And no, I didn't use coke but I knew all too many who did.
posted by lordrunningclam at 1:15 PM on September 19, 2014


Really only 100 milligrams? I would have guessed the spoon would hold a gram or more. Is cocaine just really, really light?

I spent several years working in a chemical sample archive at a pharmaceutical company. I used little metal spatulas about the size of those spoons, to measure out compounds, filling orders for 10 or 20 or 100mg each, every day another list of orders on my computer. I never weighed any cocaine. But we had 150,000 different compounds in the archive, and most of them were powders. I got pretty good at judging the texture of the compound, and then getting very close to the target weight on the first scoop. If anything it sounds like cocaine is heavier than the average powder, if you can hold 100mg in one of those spoons. I'm guessing it's 100mg in a heaping spoonful.
posted by elizilla at 1:40 PM on September 19, 2014 [5 favorites]


While the representative’s intention was to deride the anti-drug crusaders’ attack, his stunt fell on the wrong ears -- those belonging to former President of the National Federation of Parents for Drug-Free Youth, Joyce Nalepka. Though Nalepka left the hearing without a chance to testify, she spent her whole drive home “searching for some way to counteract [the PTA’s] McDonald’s spoon statement.”

Then it hit her: she’d contact McDonald’s, inform the company of its utensil’s bad rap on the street, and demand they discontinue it.
That really should have been the moment everybody decided it was time to take a step back and reevaluate the whole thing. Instead it was full speed ahead and all it accomplished was further derangement of the nation.

I've been watching Prohibition over the last few nights, and I've realized that the temperance movement, prohibition, and the Volstead Act explain everything that's wrong with politics in America.
posted by ob1quixote at 1:56 PM on September 19, 2014 [3 favorites]


When I'm finally Kwisatz Haderach, if you demand that somebody do something "for the children" I will teleport an angry badger right onto the top of your head.

This will require you keeping up a facility maintaining a rotating stock of alert badgers kept specially irritated for ready use. What I'm saying is, I volunteer for work in badger annoying, although provisionally -- what safety measures for animal frustrators will your regime adopt?
posted by JHarris at 3:43 PM on September 19, 2014 [2 favorites]


still available
posted by telstar at 6:49 PM on September 19, 2014


Next up: the war on car keys.
posted by oceanjesse at 7:46 PM on September 19, 2014


7-11 slurpee straws are like the all-in-one product. Scooper for measuring, straw for consumption.
posted by mannequito at 11:48 PM on September 19, 2014


I remember those spoons! As a little kid, I thought they looked so cool.
posted by SisterHavana at 1:10 AM on September 20, 2014


if you demand that somebody do something "for the children" I will teleport an angry badger right onto the top of your head.

::obligatory Wu Tang joke::


Wu Tang is for the children. Wu Tang does not do. Wu Tang is, therefor please sheathe your badger.
posted by Ghidorah at 4:18 AM on September 20, 2014 [1 favorite]


Not only for cocaine. For a while I was acquainted with some low level heroin dealers. The McDonald's spoon was a treasured tool. It was the perfect size for measuring out dime bags of dope.

Here in the UK as well -- where they survived well into the 90s. At that time, a £10 bag of heroin was a spoon and a half of dope.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 5:31 AM on September 20, 2014


uncleozzy: "Jesucristo, 11% of adults in 1979 were using cocaine? It looks like that number stayed reasonably stable through the early 1980s. This explains just about everything."

Although I wasn't born then, that sounded really shockingly high to me. I wasn't sure of the reputability of policyalmanac (couldn't find any affiliations of it) and didn't find a linkable source on that site. So I did some googling and found the 1982 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse and the percentage listed policyalmanac does not match up with the actual source data (see pg. 85 of the codebook PDF listed in the url that I linked) which states only 2.83% of all Americans used cocaine within the past month.

Nonetheless, I am still surprised that 13% of all Americans ever tried cocaine.
posted by fizzix at 9:40 AM on September 20, 2014 [2 favorites]


"It is strange, because I also remember them from the 80s, maybe even the 90s in Canada. Could they really have had that many of these spoons in storage in 1979? "

I'm pretty sure they were available in Canada — I remember seeing them around pretty regularly in Michigan, and Detroit is one of the few places you can drive south to Canada.
posted by klangklangston at 12:54 PM on September 22, 2014


emjaybee: "I wonder if these will appear on the inevitable banned object list for 3D printers?

Why? I mean, you could technically whittle a cocaine spoon if you wanted to. If people want to use 3D printers to create drug-using devices, they will either ignore a ban or tweak the design just enough that it falls outside the ban. The availability of spoons, pipes and bongs is already so great that a 3D printer is not going to change it much.
"

Because like the laws against consumer level piracy (bullshit stuff like the technical infringement of MLB by passing a record of a game to another person) it will allow politicians to appear to be doing something to law and order types without actually having any impact on any lobbyists except potential positives for the prison industry.
posted by Mitheral at 9:20 PM on September 22, 2014


>>When I'm finally Kwisatz Haderach, if you demand that somebody do
>>something "for the children" I will teleport an angry badger right onto the
>>top of your head.
>
>This will require you keeping up a facility maintaining a rotating stock
>of alert badgers kept specially irritated for ready use. What I'm saying is,
>I volunteer for work in badger annoying, although provisionally -- what safety
>measures for animal frustrators will your regime adopt?

Two things:

1) We should actually prefer badgers who are resting peacefully. Nothing pisses off a sleeping badger like being suddenly teleported onto someone's head.

2) In the case we do need badger annoyance technicians they will be given no protection. In fact, you will be required to be naked save for a thin layer of foul-tasting grubs, earthworms and other insects at all times. The badgers should regard you as a large loud piece of spoiled food and react accordingly.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 1:52 PM on September 23, 2014


badger annoyance technician

If I was the sort of person that created sock-puppets, I could not think of a better name.
posted by flaterik at 5:01 PM on September 30, 2014 [1 favorite]


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