Purple drank is a slang term for a recreational drug popular in the hip hop community in the southern United States, originating in Houston, Texas. Its main ingredient is prescription-strength cough syrup containing codeine and promethazine. Cough syrup is typically mixed with ingredients such as Sprite soft drink or Mountain Dew and pieces of Jolly Rancher candy. The purplish hue of purple drank comes from dyes in the cough syrup. Producer DJ Screw popularized the concoction in the 1990s, which is widely attributed as a source of inspiration for the ‘chopped and screwed’ style of hip hop music. However, musician Big Hawk claims it was consumed as early as the 1960s and 1970s.
DJ Screw died of a codeine-promethazine-alcohol overdose in 2000. Purple drank is confirmed or suspected to have caused the deaths of several prominent users. Respiratory depression is a potentially serious or fatal adverse drug reaction associated with the use of codeine, but mainly the danger lies in the much more potent and CNS-depressing phenothiazine-related antihistamine promethazine.
The Daily Omnivore 
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