Can you drink poison or poisoned ale as an object interaction?

Question

Inspired by the question "What is the cheapest way to damage myself and trigger the effects of the Fade Away feat?" I am now wondering whether you can drink a flagon of poisoned ale as an object interaction.

The list of things you can do with your object interaction includes:

• drink all the ale in a flagon

There are also poisons which activate when ingested such as the Assassin's Blood (Ingested) Poison which states:

A creature subjected to this poison must make a DC 10 Constitution saving throw. On a failed save, it takes 6 (1d12) poison damage and is poisoned for 24 hours. On a successful save, the creature takes half damage and isn't poisoned.

The section on ingested poisons states:

A creature must swallow an entire dose of ingested poison to suffer its effects. The dose can be delivered in food or a liquid. You may decide that a partial dose has a reduced effect, such as allowing advantage on the saving throw or dealing only half damage on a failed save.

I am wondering if there are rules that I've missed somewhere detailing poisoning things like this. I know that drinking potions require an action, but are there rules that clarify further the action-economy of poisons? Can you drink one as an object interaction? If you cannot, then what about poisoned ale?

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Two reasons you may want to do this:
To damage yourself in order to activate the Fade Away feat.
To damage yourself in order to prevent Barbarian Rage from ending.

Answer 1

Only if you're already holding the container.

I've gotten into a battle of wits with a man in black, and decided that my only option is to drink the wine in front of me. I need to do two things: pick up the cup, and drink it. Either one of those would be considered an object interaction, so if I want to do it all in one round, I have to use my action to do the other one.

This depends on a particular reading of the example object interaction "Drink all the ale in a flagon", which is that it doesn't entail picking up the flagon.

However, this reading has a major advantage: drinking potions no longer needs special treatment in the action economy. The usual act of drinking a potion involves taking it from wherever you've got it stashed and pouring it into your mouth, and requires an action. This is (under my reading) also how drinking anything else works, so we eliminate screwy behavior where you're mysteriously unable to drink something because it's secretly magical.

Mechanically, drinking a potion is still a Use Magic Device action rather than Use Object, but in almost every case what matters is that it's an action. There are still a few corner cases, such as a Thief Rogue wanting to do it as a bonus action. But there are always corner cases.