Diedra Cavina

On Sunday, Indonesia’s food and drug agency busted local businesses that allegedly sold instant coffee mixed with a drug used to treat erectile dysfunction.

Penny K. Lukito, the head of the agency, told local media that her team acted on tips from residents and tracked down locations where the drug-laced coffee was produced. They found out that the manufacturers had been operating in two West Java cities, Bandung and Bogor, since December 2019. Some packets reportedly contained sildenafil (the generic name for Viagra), while others contained the common painkiller paracetamol.

Known locally as “kopi kejantanan” or “male coffee,” coffee laced with erectile dysfunction drugs have been sold in Indonesia for at least a decade. According to authorities, these coffee brands are readily available in online marketplaces. Marketed as an herbal drink…the food and drug agency found that many of these instant coffee brands aren’t actually herbal—they conducted a sampling of 56 instant coffee products and found 22 of them contained traces of erectile dysfunction drugs.

I’m surprised these haven’t found their way into large-scale – if underground – distribution in the GOUSA.