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Sipping your favorite cocktail usually requires a bartender or a bottle of liquor, but a new product is claiming that you just need some water and a powder packet.  As Matt Galka tells us, some lawmakers are scrambling to ban it, but the creator says concerns are unfounded.

A little bit of powder, a little bit of water, mix – and you have yourself a shot of vodka.  That’s the thinking behind the new product Palcohol, powdered alcohol not yet available in stores.  But lawmakers are concerned.

“It’s so easy to carry around, it’s so easy for kids to take this alcohol and shake it up in some water and drink it, and you don’t really know you don’t see it. It’s just alcohol, It’s just powder,” said Sen. Gwen Margolis (D-Miami).

Margolis is proposing an outright ban.  Palcohol Creator Mark Phillips has addressed some of the concerns – like spiking drinks and snorting the concotion – on the products website.

“Clearly, Palcohol will not make it easier to spike a drink thanks to the size of the packet and how long it takes to dissolve,” he says in the video posted on the website.

Some lawmakers have indicated an outright ban may not be the way to go.

“We can’t stop techonology, we need to responsibly regulate it,” said Naples Republican Sen. Garrett Richter.

The bill’s sponsor says that if the state does ban the product, tourists who might have the substance legal in their homestate and accidentally bring it in shouldn’t be worried.

“If somebody happens to not know, and come through and have it in their pocket, there’s nothing that you can do about it, it certainly has an exemption for people who come through, because it’s a tourist area,” said Sen. Margolis.

The Senate proposal to ban powdered alcohol awaits a floor vote. The house version has one more committee to clear.

More than half of state legislatures around the country are considering a ban or some sort of regulation on powdered alcohol this year.  Palcohol creator Mark Phillips responded to Florida’s proposals in a statement, part of it reading “Whether you are conservative or liberal, no one wants a nanny state telling its citizens what they can and cannot drink.”