Powdered Alcohol

Count on the Dutch to be forward thinking and innovative. A new powdered alcohol concoction might just be the loophole to bypassing the legal drinking age.

A new way to mix up bubbly, alcoholic fruit drinks has stirred up a legal loophole that could allow minors to legally buy dehydrated booze. The trick is that the lime-flavored powder isn’t officially an alcoholic beverage until it’s, well, a beverage. That distinction means that an underage person can legally possess the blend until the moment it is liquefied.

Adding water results in a sparkling, green, lime-flavored liquid with a 3% alcohol content. Booz2Go is packaged in 20-gram servings that cost from one to 1.5 Euros ($1.35-$2) each. The intoxicating new product was designed by a group of Dutch students at Helicon Vocational Institute specifically for the youth market. The legal age for drinking alcohol and smoking in the Netherlands is 16. The students said a number of companies have already expressed interest in making the product commercially, but not as a way to reach the underage drinker, of course. The companies can use the same loophole to save money by avoiding the alcohol taxes as long as the product is sold in powder form.

Now, that’s intoxicating.