STORY UPDATE:Approval for powdered alcohol has been reversed by federal agency.

How’s this for a revolutionary invention: turn a glass of water into rum by stirring in a packet of powdered alcohol.

Crazy? Not with Palcohol, a new product that claims to pack the punch of hard liquor in a fine powder form. Just add it to any food or liquid and presto: instant alcohol.

It’s not on store shelves yet, but Palcohol has already cleared several regulatory hurdles in the U.S. Earlier this month, the U.S. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau approved package labels for the product.

“I thought maybe it was some sort of weird oversight or miscalculation,” said Robert C. Lehrman, an attorney at Lehrman Beverage Law who has spent 25 years specializing in the regulation of alcoholic beverages and said he has never seen anything like it.

Lawyers at his Washington, D.C. firm first learned of the product when they came across a government document approving seven product labels for Palcohol.

According to the product’s website, Palcohol was created by Mark Phillips, an Arizona man who wanted a portable form of alcohol for camping trips. Phillips could not be reached for comment.

Lehrman said he spoke with Phillips after learning about the label approval, though he is not Phillips’ lawyer.

“He said he was working with the government for many years to get this approved,” Lehrman said.

“He had to qualify as a distillery, so he has a distillery licence, which is a big project. Then he had to get a formal approval on every formulation. He’s got about five different products there — a vodka-type product, a rum-type product,” Lehrman said.

According to the product’s website, the alcohol content of the powder is derived from rum and vodka. Flavouring and sweeteners are added for different cocktails, including lemon drop, cosmopolitan and margarita.

An early version of the product’s website pitched the portability of the powder, which could be smuggled into concerts, sporting events, movie theatres, and even on to cruise ships to avoid buying booze.

Not only that, the website stated, but Palcohol can be snorted.

“You’ll get drunk almost instantly because the alcohol will be absorbed so quickly in your nose,” the site said, before stressing this is a bad idea and Palcohol should only be used responsibly.

Since news of the product broke, the company has removed that text from their website, explaining it was a “humorous and edgy” first draft they didn’t intend the public to see. (View the web page cache here.)

The updated site says the company has increased the volume of the Palcohol powder to discourage snorting, which “is not a responsible or smart way to use the product.”

According to the website, Palcohol will be sold in the U.S. and internationally, and will also be available for sale online.

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But don’t expect to find pouches of Palcohol at the LCBO anytime soon. Lehrman cautioned that Phillips will have to clear a number of other hurdles before it can be sold to the public, including manufacturing mass quantities of the product, securing approval from state regulators and striking deals with wholesale distributors.

“I would expect that they would be quite cautious about this,” Lehrman said. “If you’re making a lot of money selling Johnny Walker Blue or Heineken, do you really want to rock the boat with this?”