Slashdot Mirror
Caffeinated Alcoholic Drinks May Be Illegal
Anonymusing writes "The FDA has announced an investigation into the safety and legality of alcoholic beverages containing caffeine. As a Wall Street Journal blog reports, two major beer companies, MillerCoors and Anheuser-Busch, stopped producing caffeinated alcoholic drinks last year after reports surfaced of increased negative effects compared to caffeine-free alcohol. CNN notes that, according to FDA rules, 'food additives require premarket approval based on data demonstrating safety submitted to the agency' — and caffeine is a food additive. The 26 targeted beverage makers have 30 days to respond."
Or is that not going to be available either?
And would my bartender get arrested?
Liquid Charge, Max Fury, Hard Wired, Vicious Vodka ... Anyone who sells stuff with names like that deserves to be shut down. Of course, anyone who buys the stuff deserves whatever happens to them, so maybe they should stay on the market. ;)
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Point-of-sale mixed drinks are specifically excluded. It's kind of arbitrary, yeah, but the FDA doesn't really have jurisdiction over that kind of thing. State and local health departments do, of course, and I can see some overzealous crusader trying to make a name for himself that way, but trying to get rid of classic caffeine-and-alcohol combinations like Irish coffee or rum and Coke would probably create too much of a backlash.
Hmmm, I wonder about chocolate and coffee liqueurs? I can't see them banning Kahlua any time soon, either.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Crap, now I've gotta chug as many of these vodka and Red Bull drinks as possible before the health inspector bursts in... better tell the bartender my home address now so she can tell the cabbie where I live later.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
How long has this been around? Probably as long as coke. So now they think it should be made illegal. Idiots.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Since Coke is probably the single most common dark mixer, a lot of bartenders are going to be peeved over this one.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Ice Breaker:
1.5 oz Vodka
0.5 oz Cassis
4 oz Energy Drink of your choice (I prefer NoFear or Amp in mine)
4 oz Pineapple Juice
Shake with ice, serve on the rocks in a martini glass.
Come and get me, coppers!
Unless we're talking about spanish coffees, alcoholic coffee drinks often have a lot less liquor than the drinks they are talking about. A shot of vodka in a 6 oz. red bull has tremendous side effects for a lot of people.
My own informal research done in bars among friends who enjoy drinks like this, heart palpitations aren't unusual after a few vodka/redbulls or jager bombs. Mixing a moderate stimulant with a strong depressant just spells disaster.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
!!!!
Warning: Negative side effects may include being a lot more drunk than you thought you were and the irrational urge to do something dangerous.
!!!!
Does this remind anyone of the Drew Carey show, with their concoction of coffee and beer? Buzz Beer!
Soon, we'll be smoking weed in a bar wondering how we can score some Jack & Coke.
It just turned up here. That said slashcode is a bit flaky now. Occasionally it gives me a front page with the last five or so articles removed. Maybe it gave you a preview for some reason.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
causality is overrated anyway
Even people that believe in pre-destiny look both ways before crossing the street.
Ignoring the legalities of this, and focusing on the identified risk, decaf would be OK.
The problem as identified in the article, if I read it correctly, is that drinking megacaf beverages with large amounts of alcohol basically puts you in an "inebriated and energized" state. In other words, when you get completely falling-down drunk, the caffeine only mitigates the "falling down" part. It prevents you from passing out when passing out is a damned fine defense mechanism that keeps you from doing something incredibly and amazingly stupid.
The same effect can be seen by a drunk who's had WAY too many and tries to down a bunch of coffee to compensate. Their responses aren't any more accurate - they are still a danger to themselves and others, but it gives them the energy to FEEL like they are functioning somewhere near normal. At least someone on four sixpacks of Bud is pretty much incapacitated, and generally understands that. Add two pots of coffee and they start FEELING energized and alert, when in fact they are only energized.
So you can safely mix anything you want with your alcohol and avoid this effect, as long as you don't want a stimulant. And while decaf coffee does have a certain amount of caffeine, for the purposes of this discussion it's not enough to compensate for the alcohol and is therefore irrelevant.
As to "would the law follow this logical train of thought", well, look at the state of the average knee-jerk law and think about it. Though, as others have stated, if the bartender mixes it it's OK. It's really only packaged liquor they appear to be going after.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
So, the FDA should allow anything to be consumed by anyone under 1 caveat: feeding, selling, or offering FDA-determined unhealthy substances (e. g., heroin, tobacco, alcohol, and the like) to anyone under the age of 21 should be treated as a felony -- with a mandatory minimum penalty of 10 years in prison. Once you reach the age of 21, you are an adult in the eyes of the law, and you are free to destroy your body in any way that you want. What you do with yourself is none of society's business. Since health care is not guaranteed in the USA, medical treatment for your sickness (due to your deliberate consumption of unhealthy substances) will not be paid by the other taxpayers.
The "Just say no." campaign never worked. The "You are free to inject until you die at your own expense." campaign will work.
Yeah, it's pretty weird to read that the combination of caffeine and alcohol is not "generally recognized as safe". For how many centuries do you suppose people have been drinking Irish coffee?
Your god may be dead, but mine aren't!
I also laughed at the TFAs, with the picture of the Vodka and Red Bull on the other TFA...and what about those Jager-bombs?
But, it could be another front on the war on energy drinks. Google searching for "Red Bull kid death", looking for an article about how excessive energy drinks are causing health problems in kids, yields this first propaganda hit. But all it takes is one of these to get pusilanimous parents in an uproar.
But I'll admit that those drinks are bad. They almost always but taurine and ginseng and other shit into them to increase the synergistic effects, and they taste like by-products from a meth lab.
One of the TFAs also says that Sparks drinks have been discontinued, but they're still readily available in my state, and there's no shortage of them. But the worst(best?) one is Joose.
Seeing as his and some other first posters posts are dated Saturday November 14, @09:07PM , and the articles November 15, @05:36AM (when I saw it too), maybe it was available earlier too.
There's a pretty huge problem with banning alcoholic beverages containing caffeine. The worst offenders are not drinks that come in a can from Coors, but mixed drinks, like Vodka Red-Bull's. You can make laws telling people not to mix their Vodka and Red Bulls together, but good luck enforcing them! (Honestly, you'd think common sense and a sense of taste would be enough...)
The truly awful thing is that, if this kind of law was enacted, the drinks it would actually kill would be wonderful, rich microbrew espresso stouts and imperial coffee stouts. Outlaw Coors Light if you must, but DO NOT FUCK WITH GOOD BEER.
Finally, the most damning argument against this sort of law of all is that stupid frat boys and girls will still wind up doing stupid things no matter what they're drinking. So what's the point eh?
if the drinks with caffeine caused the behavior they are concerned about or the personality of the person. The people a the bar I occasionally visit who order these drinks (particularly the ones with energy drinks) seem to have a certain type of personality that would lend itself to the actions observed.
Kahlua might skirt around the definition of "food additive" because its caffeine isn't actually specifically added? Hard to say for sure, but it's plausible that having caffeine because the drink includes coffee is legally distinct from adding synthetic caffeine, as most energy drinks do.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Potential disaster or not, as long as people are making an informed and deliberate choice I fail to see the need for government action.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
No caffeine, so it's safe (kinda).
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
Exactly, and I fail to see how vodka+red bull would have tremendous side effects on people any more than other liquor.
However one thing I've noticed is the major improvement in gaming performance, then things like this happen.
when you mix alcohol and caffeine people don't pass out.
instead they run around black-out drunk until someone bumps into them and a fight breaks out right at closing time.
save yourself and don't mix the two, especially in high doses.
My own informal research done in bars among friends who enjoy drinks like this, heart palpitations aren't unusual after a few vodka/redbulls or jager bombs. Mixing a moderate stimulant with a strong depressant just spells disaster.
I'd imagine you'd have issues with heart palpitations after a few redbulls even without the vodka or jager. I would imagine alcohol probably reduces their judgement, and people maybe don't think "gee I've just shotgunned 4 energy drinks maybe I should slow down"
You're thinking small. Why miniaturize the laser, when we could instead enlarge the sharks? -John Searle
Are they really going to mess withe Coca-Cola like that?
Most popular caffeinated alcoholic beverage? Jack/Jim and Coke
They'll take my Black Russian from my cold dead hands.
Sent from my PDP-11
Maybe they can just alter the packaging to have two sides, like dual-action drain cleaner or epoxy. Open the top and it mixes when you pour.
Actually, I think this is the right way to determine legality of drugs. (And alcohol and caffeine are certainly drugs.) Determine whether a reasonable person can use the drug with a high confidence of safety. If yes, the drug is legal. If no, the drug is illegal for reasons of public health and safety.
Jack and Coke are two consumables that are reasonably safe in their separate forms. If you mix them together then indeed you have alcohol and caffeine, but each active ingredient is more dilute than before. That's different than adding all the caffeine of Coke (or much more) to a drink with all the alcohol of Jack Daniels.
How can I binge and surge if they outlaw it? I guess I'll be an Outlaw.
Less than one.
Potential disaster or not, as long as people are making an informed and deliberate choice I fail to see the need for government action.
Possibly because the informed part is often missing.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
Requiring premarket approval does not mean it is banned, just that you need approval. Before you market it.
Caffeinated alcohol drinks really caught on in the mid to late 90's (when "rave" culture became mainstream and made lamer than it already was). So why now?
The problem is not just caffeine, which has been included in drinks for quite some time; rum and coke was mentioned earlier. It is the ingredients that are mixed in with energy drinks that have strong side effects that are not fully understood, such as guarana and taurine.
Now it may seem a little ambiguous at first, but there are several classifications of these drinks:
1. Crazy bar mixers, such as jager bombs and red bull vodkas (strong but expensive)
2. Malt liquor/energy drink mixers, such as Sparks (weak but cheap)
3. High alcohol/strong energy drinks (strong and cheap), such as Four, which seem to have been pulled off the market in my area.
Drinks such as Four have an alcohol content of 9-11% in a 24 once serving, which justifies its name as 4 times the normal alcoholic drink content. It's hard to draw the line in this debate, but being able to ingest 4x the alcoholic content of a beer plus a red bull or two from a single can is a bit much. Why not throw some absinthe in while we can?
I assure you, Jager and Redbull can come to no good end.
Though I don't think it's any business of the FDA.
Is it too much to ask for a society that lets people make their own mistakes? Must we be hemmed in by the moral and ethical mistakes of the stupidest amongst us? How long must the law protect us from ourselves? Have you as a public been fooled into thinking I'm unaware of the dangers of smoking, carousing, and general debauchery? I assure I'm well aware, and I don't care. Please stop making thing illegal for my own good. I'm old enough to choose to make my own mistakes. As should you be.
Yeah, that makes sense. And I doubt the amount of caffeine in a typical serving of Kahlua is significant. I certainly don't feel any more awake after I've had it. ;)
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
I fail to see how vodka+red bull would have tremendous side effects on people any more than other liquor.
And I fail to see how talking on a cell phone while driving is any more distracting than talking to passengers while driving, but hey... the studies say different.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
First, this is not a scientific study, it's simply a survey that shows a slight correlation between some increased risk behaviors and mixing alcohol with caffeine... All this study shows is that people who make increased risk choices are more likely to make increased risk choices in other unrelated issues...because they are risk takers. Correlation is not causation! Wake up!!
In my lazyboy just a watchin' my TV
There's something that the newsman can't explain to me
Maybe I'm just paranoid as I set my reefer down but
If there's a war on drugs goin' on, how come they're all around?
But we're winning the war on drugs, we're winning the war on drugs
Praise the lord and pass the bong, we're winning the war on drugs
You can grow 'em in your basement or score 'em off the thugs.
Put your hands against the car, we're winning the war on drugs.
--Asylum Street Spankers "We're Winning the War on Drugs"
You advocating the individual's right to choose and then take responsibility for the consequences? As a superior solution to simply accepting Big Brother's word and loving him as we do? We don't take kindly to your type round here.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Okay, .6, well, we can round that up to 1 :)
So in these 6 decades, has anyone even heard of a problematic interaction between caffeine and alcohol? I certainly haven't.
BTW I consume very little of either of these drugs, and don't think I've ever had them together.
Your god may be dead, but mine aren't!
Another case where it doesn't matter. If someone is driving in an erratic manner or causes an accident, throw the book at them for that. Don't try to analyze and control everything that might be a contributing factor. It's futile, and contrary to the legitimate purpose of government.
Instead; encourage people to know their limitations and act within them, and hold them responsible if they fail to do so.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
I've never heard of someone getting trashed off of Irish coffee. Maybe it happens sometimes, but I think that redbull and vodka's are much more likely to be abused.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Are you saying that people have no idea that they're imbibing concoctions that contain alcohol and caffeine, and that they further have no idea of the effects of those chemicals? That knowledge is the whole reason the stuff sells.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
Um they are not talking about u miixing Red Bulls and Vodka. That will still go on. They are targeting drinks that are alcoholic and have caffeine. I.E. Sparks.
This is just stupid, when will the nanny state stop! Its really getting old. Just like the comment above you said, they wont get rid of rum and coke. Its just a joke. What are they going to not let you buy red Bulls and Alcohol together, have someone watching just in case someone mixes some Rum with a monster.
I am fearful of what will happen when we pass universal health care. Then let the lunacy begin. I'm sorry sir you cant buy that cheese, you have met your cheese quota for the year. Sorry sir that bacon is not allowed under Article 12 sub section D of we know whats best for you.
This it wont happen just wait and see.
[Citation Needed]
I guess I'm a dinosaur like that.
"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies, The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for own good w...ill torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." -- C.S. Lewis
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
what
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
One is a sedative, the other a stimulant. Mixing the 2 is a reliable way to have a heart attack. Especially when combined with other high risk factors such as lack of exercise and obesity. It's the same principle for why one should never mix prescription drugs without professional advice.
Czech language for absolute beginners
The parent is correct. It isn't as though all FDA regulations apply to all things. There are some that apply only to packaged goods. Nutritional labeling would be a good example. Any packaged good intended for resale is required to have a nutritional label on it. However, prepared meals are not. While many restaurants do make nutritional data available on their website or the like, they don't have to and they don't have to provide a label with the food.
Same sort of thing here. They are looking at regulating packaged drinks with alcohol and caffeine. Also note the "regulating" part. They aren't saying they are going to ban them, they are just having a look to see if maybe rules should be made for them. For example they might find that a certain ratio of alcohol to caffeine is unsafe and thus regulate that ratio.
From TFA: “The analogy I like to use is that it’s like stepping on the gas pedal and the brake pedal of a car at the same time,"
Crap. I was going to post a car analogy, but I am now redundant.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
As we all know, absinthe doth make the tart grow fonder.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
...when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
I'm starting to get a little scared about all the legislating going on... I mean, seriously, it's alcohol. People don't drink it for the health benefits!
:)
I'm really hoping that in the near future, the US government becomes much more hands-off. We can handle life on our own, really. (Well, most of us can. As for people like this, well... Tough luck to them.)
Failing that, though, can anyone recommend a nice country with good Internet access and a hands-off government?
I'm not going to argue the "kinda out of it for a month" claim but I challenge you to produce the results of any study that backs up your claim that isn't countered by double the number of studies that find exactly the opposite, but your claim that you're "ok maybe two or three days later" is ridiculous. Brain damage, cirrhosis, heart disease are some permanent problems just to name a few, and if that's not good enough for you, you can die by drinking it quickly enough.
Go try to die or have any permanent effect by smoking as much pot as you possibly can as fast as you can. Unless you have asthma or a very bad heart or something, you will fail, every time. Use a vaporizer, a gravity bong, it doesn't matter, you just can't do it. I'm not even sure you could permanently hurt yourself if you ate a pound of the stuff. In studies, the lethal to effective dose ratio from animal studies, I've seen numbers anywhere from 250:1 to 40,000:1. Even for really really good weed, where you would feel something off half of a normal-sized hit, and using the 250:1 statistic which is frankly so far outside what every other study I've seen that it should hardly be considered, you'd have to take 125 hits to die. All I have to say is, go try to take 125 hits of weed good enough to get you stoned of half a hit. Just try, try as hard as you can.
On second thought, I will argue against your "out of it for a month" claim, because it's just so ridiculous. No drug lasts for a month, that's just silly. If you did try it, and you felt out of it for a month, you either smoked something laced with an exotic research chemical (you didn't), or I'm afraid it was nothing but your overactive imagination at work.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
Passengers generally become less distracting when they know you need more concentration on the road. (Also, you don't have to hold the passenger to your ear.)
So alcoholic beverages are "food" according to the FDA. At least that's the logic they appear to be pursuing. I guess the next step is to subsidize beer with food stamps.
The Web is like Usenet, but
the elephants are untrained.
The reason is obvious - passengers can see the road and react to hazards, people on the phone cannot.
People dump booze into everything else; you really think that he was the first person to ever mix coffee and alcohol? He was just the first person to formally give it a name and sell it.
At most this should wind up an FDA advisory notice/warning. We DO NOT need anymore legislation dictating how we are to live. Period.
Civilization, the death of dreams.
Sounds like a perfectly good argument for legalising drink driving. Thankfully the rest of society hasn't gone that crazy. Yet.
Worked for the cows!
Quack, quack.
Would this affect legality of "normal" drinks like coffee porters/stouts? How about Irish coffee?
its seemed like a month, mannnnnnn
...that they took Sparks off the market (well, the caffeinated version that was worth a damn, I certainly never drank it because it tasted good) and replaced it with 4Loko, which at 12% is twice as strong as original Sparks in a can twice the size (24 oz).
I'm no lightweight when it comes to drinking, but one of these packs a punch and two is pushing your luck. Three 4Lokos is the equivalent of drinking a 12 pack of 6% beer and a few Red Bulls, so it's real easy to get lulled into thinking "I only had three of these things, I can't be that fucked up."
Still, I don't see why they should be illegal. Clearly labeled, yes...but banned? Definitely not.
Or so the bartender can tell the ambulance driver where next of kin is most likely to be found.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I think "it seemed like a good idea at the time" is the whole reason the stuff sells.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Cute, but entirely misses the point. None of this is to protect you from yourself. You can go hang for all I care if it's a result of your own actions. What's a problem is when you insist on dragging innocent people to their graves with you. "I will take responsibility for the consequences" doesn't cut it when there's absolutely nothing you can do to bring back the dead. Any claim of "taking responsibility for the consequences" under those circumstances is bullshit. There's absolutely nothing you can do to do that.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Yeah, it's pretty weird to read that the combination of caffeine and alcohol is not "generally recognized as safe". For how many centuries do you suppose people have been drinking Irish coffee?
(Using the same logic...) It's pretty weird to read that cars require safety testing before being allowed on the road. For how many centuries do you suppose people have been using wheeled vehicles?
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Case closed
No it doesn't, it spells: Rum Toe Salad Time .
That's easily determined. I keep a note in my wallet to that effect, along with a note on my iPhone.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
I drink coffee in the morning to get rid of the last effects of alcohol the evening before, and drink alcohol in the evening to get rid of the last effects of the coffee in the morning....
Your post sounds incredibly plausible. It's just completely mistaken.
The issue is that it's illegal to add ANYTHING to food or beverages sold in the US, unless:
1) You have proven to the FDA that the additive is safe and they have approved the use of the additive, or
2) The additive is "Generally Accepted" as safe (sugar and salt would be considered generally accepted as safe additives)
Caffeine is an additive, and the FDA has only approved the use of caffeine as an additive in soft drinks in amounts less than 200mg, so unless the companies distributing these products can show that caffeine is generally accepted as safe, it's illegal to add it to alcoholic beverages. Or anything else that isn't a soft drink.
This has nothing to do with having alcohol and caffeine together specifically. It's just a natural extension of the law in the US that says "You can't put shit in food if you don't show it's safe first."
paintball
What part of the constitution actually authorizes them to do this?
I am fearful of what will happen when we pass universal health care. Then let the lunacy begin. I'm sorry sir you cant buy that cheese, you have met your cheese quota for the year. Sorry sir that bacon is not allowed under Article 12 sub section D of we know whats best for you.
I was with you until you started getting retarded right here.
Here in Sweden, where universal healthcare has been in place for many years, you'll have no trouble buying a vodka + Red Bull in any bar. And people pig out on all-you-can-eat lunch buffets regularly.
Tia Maria or Kahlua anyone? :)
So I read the article about the reports of negative effects. They surveyed college students, and a result (for example) was that students who mixed energy drinks and alcohol were more likely to ride with a drunk driver. Or put another way, students who rode with a drunk driver were more likely to mix energy drinks and alcohol. Maybe riding with a drunk driver gives a person cravings for energy drinks mixed with alcohol. Or maybe People who are stupid or have poor regard for their own health and safety are likely to make multiple bad decisions, like riding with a drunk driver and mixing energy drinks and alcohol.
I'm not saying mixing energy drinks and alcohol is not bad, I'm sure it is, I'm just saying the study may be flawed.
Perhaps government has a little more common sense there; I don't know. Here in the states now you have to show ID to buy cold medication and decongestants most places and even if you are plainly sick as dog they won't sell you more than one box.
Why because someone might use it to cook methadone.. Trust me the parent poster is correct. In the USA if universal health care passes we are only a decade or so from having health id cards with our last know BMI listed on them. When we hit the grocery check out belt with bacon and a carton of eggs it absolutely will be "Papers please." and very likely "oh sorry we have a problem here your listed at 22 and we can only sell you 1/3lb every quarter you're past quota I am sorry sir."
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
not many, it was invented at Shannon airport about 70 years ago.
I've had Jägermeister+ Redbull many many times, but I usually put a limit at 4 a night, and I've never experienced any difference between those drinks and other drinks.
Booze gets you hammered, and you are still ok maybe two to three days later.
Holy shit, what are you drinking that takes three days to recover from? If it takes more than one day to recover from a night of drinking, you're probably in the hospital (or the morgue) for alcohol poisoning.
I've heard LSD called the drug that keeps on giving. So even if the drug itself is no longer in your system, there could be mental effects for a month after.
I can't comment on natural marijuana, but I did take synthetic THC (Marinol) during chemotherapy. I wasn't getting much effect from single-pill doses, so one night I tried two pills spaced two hours apart (which was still well within the prescribed dosage). A couple hours later I was hit with unpleasant hallucinations and distortions of time (my blog entry). My body returned to normal overnight, but my brain was well scrambled for at least a week.
So I don't think it's crazy to say some drugs could have an effect for longer than they're measurable in the bloodstream. I'd like to see more scientific studies of many drugs and legalization of those that can be used with reasonable safety. Maybe natural marijuana would have been a better treatment for my chemotherapy side effects, but unfortunately in my district it's still thoroughly illegal.
Are you saying that people have no idea that they're imbibing concoctions that contain alcohol and caffeine, and that they further have no idea of the effects of those chemicals?
Yes, yes we are. You obviously haven't spent enough time in bars near college campuses.
P.S. I'm not convinced that you can toss out studies that find something just because other studies didn't. That's like saying we sent three expeditions to find a white whale. Two returned empty-handed and one returned with a white whale. Therefore, white whales do not exist. If the studies looked for different things, in different places, or in different ways then they might all be valid.
So in these 6 decades, has anyone even heard of a problematic interaction between caffeine and alcohol? I certainly haven't.
It's not like mixing ammonia and bleach. One or two cups of Irish coffee won't do much to you. Most people can handle two drinks without being affected much at all, and a can of Red Bull probably has more caffeine than two cups of Irish coffee.
Mod parent "Glenn Beck"
There's also usually a lot less caffeine in something like an Irish coffee, and you don't tend to drink them all evening.
Perhaps you hang with a different crowd, but I don't think I've ever seen someone chug Irish coffees all night.
It would be sort of hard to drink that much beer and coffee (I guess you were probably using hyperbole, but it is an interesting aside), drinking a case in 8 hours means you are downing 12 ounces of liquid every 20 minutes, and the two pots of coffee would be another 120 ounces, so at the same rate, it would add another 3 hours.
Double the rate (1 can every 10 minutes is insane! Maybe not for the first couple, but after that...) and you are still talking about more than 5 hours.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Go try to die or have any permanent effect by smoking as much pot
You are going to wind up with lung cancer and emphysema.
This is my sig.
after eating about a quarter of an ounce, I was out of it for a day. completely out of it, slept through most of it, completely non-functional, for ONE day. I am not a big pot head, I've used it fewer than thirty times in my life, and that's all that happened when I overdosed.
Alcohol poisoning is much easier to self inflict, and much more likely to kill you.
First they came for the heroin shooters, and I said nothing.
Then they came for the crack smokers, and I said nothing.
Then they came for me with my rum and Coke, and there was no one left to defend me.
Plus I was really wasted.
Support the FairTax
No shit Sherlock.
You obviously have no idea what really taking responsibility means. If you fuck up so bad that nothing can ever fix it, you deserve to spend the rest of your life dedicated to trying to fix it anyway. That kind of deterrent tends to be more effective at preventing tragedies than turning society into a bunch of perpetual children by restricting everything they might do that could have ugly consequences.
Of course it's too late to do any good for people like you who have already either decided to be perpetual children, or see themselves as overseers of that perverse kindergarten.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
That's probably because funny doesn't give karma points any more, therefore, insightful became the new funny
Why because drug dealers have been buying it to cook methamphetamine .
I don't support the FDA's actions here. But in reply to about half the comments thus far written. This isn't a ban on mixing an alcoholic beverage with a caffeinated one. The FDA, in light of studies that suggest mixing caffeine and alcohol causes more injuries than alcohol alone, has asked makers of alcoholic beverages to supply evidence that it has already allowed caffeine to be added to alcoholic beverages. Their is that caffeine is legally a food additive and you must get the FDA's permission to add a given additive to a given product. So whether you like this development or not, it does not ban whiskey and Coke or Red Bull and Vodka, as the FDA does not have the authority to ban the mixing of drinks.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
The problem starts when you are out so far your body forgets to breathe. Can happen with all downing drugs and is one of the main dangers of OD. You may have been very lucky to survive. If you ate the stuff and your body tried to vomit it out but couldn't due to your being too far out cold, you might even have died suffocating on your own vomit.
As for alcohol poisoning - I doubt it's harder to inflict than grass poisoning or more likely to kill. If you OD, you screwed up, whatever the poison in question is.
Word of advice - decide beforehand on your limit, monitor your own intake and know that if you loose count, it's time to call it a day. If you have to experiment, get a sober minder to stay with you.
-- Put crudely, the world is an extremely large problem instance. (Russel/Norvig Artificial Intelligence)
My shit is safer than most.
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
Are you saying that people have no idea that they're imbibing concoctions that contain alcohol and caffeine, and that they further have no idea of the effects of those chemicals? That knowledge is the whole reason the stuff sells.
No. People buying these drinks know they have "an effect" Usually an enjoyable one at first. They do not necessarily think about that effect when pouring it down their neck. Or what happens to them when they drink a large number of these drinks.
People in their late teens/early 20s do not have a great reputation for considerd actions when in a group, vying for each other to show how much more they can drink than their friends. Perhaps it's a cultural thing, but I doubt there is that much difference between young Americans and young English adults. And drinking too many alcoholic energy drinks is more of a group activity than something you do to unwind after a hard day.
If you imagine everybody is rational and looks at consequences carefully before engaging in such activities, you really need to get out more.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
Do you imagine that the problem of young people being reckless is one that can be reduced by banning caffeinated alcoholic drinks?
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
Morphine's available in the US for similar applications, and for most applications it's as good as or better than heroin.
Vicodin (hydrocodone plus acetaminophen/paracetamol ) is widely prescribed for unsupervised use, for people who need something a bit stronger than codeine (which is also mixed with acetaminophen here) - the FDA and DEA allow it because the acetaminophen will rot your liver and kidneys if you take abuse-level doses, so they don't mind if your dentist prescribes you a bottle of 20 to take until your root-canal pain wears off. Oxycodone is somewhat stronger than hydrocodone.
Those drugs can be prescribed with only moderate levels of bureaucracy here - but if doctors want to prescribe anything stronger, or prescribe opiates that aren't mixed with other drugs, outside of a hospital environment, there's a much heavier level of bureaucratic supervision and in many cases outright harassment. That's starting to be a problem, as the medical practices are finding that acetaminophen overuse is a more serious problem than they'd expected, but they can't prescribe the safer versions because of the regulators' perception of abuse potential.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
There goes my Rum and Coke, with my Jager & Red Bull chaser..... (Kidding! I'd never corrupt Jager by mixing it with Red Bull... Drink it straight, like a man! :> )
I'm in the San Francisco Bay Area; if I wanted to legally buy marijuana this week I could look in the paper for a doctor who'll recommend marijuana to help my back pain / migraines / stress / paranoia / whatever, and then go buy good quality marijuana at a "clinic". :-) Or there's probably a jam-band concert coming to your area next summer, if you're not in a hurry.
Jon Stewart (no relation) once said the whole medical-marijuana process seemed silly, if he needed it he could go buy it in the park like everybody else in New York does
On the other hand, if I wanted a non-hippie drug like meth, I don't actually know where to look; rednecks don't hang out in drum circles, the nearby motorcycle shops are for yuppies, and walking into a strange biker bar asking if anybody's dealing meth is probably a Bad Idea. Maybe some of the hippie drug dealers in the park would know somebody who knows somebody.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Aspirbeer, with 100 mg of ibuprofen per bottle.
Vaporizers seem to be the medical recommendation for taking it for nausea, but otherwise, if you want to consume mass quantities of the stuff without lung damage, baked goods are the way to go. One college friend of mine found that there are unfortunate feedback problems with that approach, though - the effects can hit you in different order if you're eating it, and he'd be getting the munchies before the high set in, and there's this plate of yummy brownies on the table...
There was one French soldier who tried to commit suicide by eating a pound or so of hashish. Didn't work, though he was asleep for a while and disoriented for a while longer.
That doesn't seem to be a medical risk with marijuana - there are no known cases of death from overdose, and it tends to discourage vomiting (unlike some of the psychedelic mushrooms.) On the other hand, even though marijuana's not fatal, it can lead to Stupidity, which can be fatal.
But yeah, you definitely should have a babysitter if you're consuming dubious substances. (Quarter of an ounce? Dude, what were you thinking?)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Perhaps government has a little more common sense there
That would be believable, but here in the UK the government hasn't stopped me buying a Vodka & Red bull yet. We also have some of the highest obesity rates in Europe due to people still being able to pig out and not exercise. Not even the American government is dumber than ours here.
If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
The main problem is that it lets you consume lots of alcohol without realizing that you're that drunk, because the caffeine makes you awake and bouncy, and the lack of flavor in the vodka also makes you notice it less. If you'd been drinking that much vodka straight up, you'd have noticed the effects earlier and slowed down, or at least been more aware that you shouldn't be doing things that seem like a perfectly fine idea with all that caffeine. And then the ethanol catches up with you.
Irish coffee doesn't have quite the same effect, because it's hot enough you drink it slowly, plus the social environment you drink it in is different. And it has good-tasting ingredients, as opposed to Red Bull which is just nasty :-) Rum & Coke is an intermediate case - you're getting a lot more liquid for the amount of ethanol and caffeine, so your body can process it more slowly and you won't get as much of the dehydration problems causing that hangover the next day.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Let's go further. Let's have the FDA stop telling doctors what drugs can't be used together. If patients make an informed decision to take medications that combine to form deadly side effects, why should the government step in to tell them they can't.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Have you as a public been fooled into thinking I'm unaware of the dangers of smoking, carousing, and general debauchery?
It's not these the FDA is concerned about, but the possibly as-yet-unknown interactions between caffeine and alcohol that could exacerbate the long term ill effects of the other.
As I understand it, to fully understand the risks, you must be a microbiologist who specializes in human metabolism. Me, I'm a CS major, and while I could spend a decade of my life studying biology and chemistry, and human metabolism so that I could know for certain the risks, I choose not to.
Instead, a portion of my tax dollars pays someone at the FDA to do that for me. That way, I can get on with having a good time without having to conduct a formal risk analysis every time I go the bar.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Yeah, but do people have half a dozen plus irish coffees in a single night, then dance around like hooligans? No - and I'd bet most people usually only have one after a substantial restaurant meal and beer/wine.
Do you imagine that the problem of young people being reckless is one that can be reduced by banning caffeinated alcoholic drinks?
No.. Do you imagine it is supposed to?
Sorry.. I don't do pedantic or false dichotomy bullshit. Too much effort to argue around imaginary points.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
If beer is food, and needs to be regulated as such, then it should be tax-exempt like other food items.
Kid-proof tablet..
I've only done pot about 6 times, every single time results in me feeling dizzy, nauseous, and I usually vomit. I've tried different methods of smoking, the marijuana was different each time, but it always ends up making me puke. Why six times? Well every once in a while my friends will convince me they've figured out why I react so badly and I give in and try it a different way but I always get sick. I'm not going to try it anymore, I'm just one of those people who's body rejects THC.
Now Rx opiates on the other hand...
They did not mention any of the products that we know has way too much caffeine in it, Pepsi and Coke, would they not
be subject to this law as well, or are they greasing the pockets of those pushing the enforcement of such laws?
... a dude named Lebowski laughs...
---------- Financial Crypto is the Only Crypto That Matters
Ditto. In my idiotic mind, I can't follow an argument that says "X shouldn't be illegal because Y isn't". I'd rather go for adding more restrictions to Y. Maybe some nice shocking messages like those in cigarette packs.
For our "luck", the tobacco companies went the way of "it's harmless" instead of "alcohol is worse". A few decades and researches later, when they were proven wrong and that they knew it all along, we have Canadian provinces suing them to recover the money spent treating lung cancer victims.
Unfortunately, drugs haven't become the main source of revenue of any legal big company (except for prescription drugs, but that's another topic, wouldn't you say?), so there will be no such prosecution coming for them in the near future.
I seriously hope that GP won't turn that around and say "that's my point! If they were legal, we could sue!"
http://dilbert.com/2010-12-13
The Internet says:
Kahlua actually has very low levels of caffeine, (approximately 4.85 mg in each 1.5 oz drink).
One cup of coffee contains about 100mg of caffeine, so if were looking at 100ml of Kahlua there should be about 10 mg of caffeine. (1/10 of a cup of coffee).
I gather you'd be wasted before you noticed any caffeine from drinking Kahlua.
.evom ton seod gis eht
Heh, and thus you should be able to buy it after midnight (OK, restrictions vary by jurisdiction).
Imagine if foods worked the same way: The store clerk refuses to ring up a pack of Twinkies just because it's late afternoon and the law says "you might spoil your dinner". And if you're obese, the clerk will refuse, saying "you've had a few too many". Forget that jar of Prego, too - I can smell the garlic on your breath all the way over here...
- T
IMO this was bound to happen. Have you ever drank two Sparks in a row?
My heart started to feel uncomfortable.
I think these companies could be in a lot of trouble if the shit were to hit the fan. Drugs don't produce this uncomfortable feeling until near-overdose territory.
Read: Meth is comfortable where as higher doses of caffeine make my heart feel like it's under strain (*cough* a friend told me lol).