POL IS ENERGIZED TO BUST COCAINE DRINK OFF SHELVES

A Queens City Council member has declared all-out war on cocaine -
not the drug, the controversial energy drink of the same name,
spelled with a capital C.

In fact, Councilman James Sanders is so determined to drive Cocaine
off local store shelves that he plans to take his campaign against it
to Manhattan's West Side today.

Sanders (D-Far Rockaway) said the drink is dangerously potent, adding
that consumers of Cocaine have said its effects - including numbing
of the mouth and throat - can last for fivehours. Some people have
claimed to feel tightness and tingling sessions in their chest after
drinking Cocaine, the councilman said.

Cocaine markets itself as an alternative - with greater caffeine
content - tothe popular energy drink Red Bull. Cocaine began showing
up on store shelves in the city in early September.

Sanders plans to lead a noon protest today outside Westside Gourmet,
a market at 2528 Broadway that sells Cocaine.

"On one hand, we know that in one sense we can be doing the Devil's
bidding, but on the other hand, silence makes victims of us all,"
said Sanders. Cocaine's Web site lists the Manhattan store and others
in Yonkers and in Bellerose, Queens, as "dealers" of the energy
drink. However, last week an unidentified employee at Bellerose
Thrifty Beverage at 240-09 Jamaica Ave. told the Daily News that the
distributor no longer sold Cocaine. He refused to comment further.

Sanders contended that all the stores listed on the Web site, with
the exception of Westside Gourmet, had pulled their supply of Cocaine
from their shelves in the face of community opposition.

But a spokesman for Redux Beverages, the Las Vegas-based manufacturer
of Cocaine, scoffed at Sanders' impending protest and said that at
least 15 other stores in the New York area not listed on the Web site
carry the product and that others have placed orders for it.