See The New Jersey Factory Where Cocaine Is Removed From The Ingredients Of Coca-Cola

For decades, Coca-Cola has worked to correct the misimpression that its signature beverage, Coke, used to contain cocaine.

Coke did once contain trace amounts of the drug, but even those were removed completely from the formulation by 1929, according to Snopes.

As late as 1988, Coca-Cola had to deny to The New York Times that Coke contained any cocaine.

These old ads never mentioned cocaine; the relief they were referring to probably came from the coca leaf, which has a euphoric effect.

Nonetheless, the raw ingredients for Coke do contain some small amounts of cocaine, and the company employs Stepan Co. of Maywood, N.J., to process the ingredient to remove the drug, according to The Daily News. Stepan then sells the cocaine extract for medical purposes (it's used as a local anesthetic in eye, nose and tear-duct surgery); it is believed to own the sole license from the DEA for this purpose.

Stepan Co. is located at 100 West Hunter Avenue in Maywood, N.J. Oddly, neither West Hunter nor nearby Beech Street, on the other side of the plant, have been photographed by Google's Street View cars yet.

The factory has appeared on Google Earth, however (click to enlarge):

Here's a closeup:

The best available image of the site is a street-level illustration by Ricardo Cortés, who wrote A Secret History of Coffee, Coca & Cola:

And Wall St Rip once used a photo of the plant in a video on its earnings:

And you can take a look at Stepan's DEA registration for cocaine processing here.