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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?
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.
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.
Soon, we'll be smoking weed in a bar wondering how we can score some Jack & Coke.
As my evangelical Sparks drinking friend used to say, "The alcohol needed to come up with bad ideas, and the energy required to follow through with them".
He checks the Sparks present in all the liquor stores he goes into to see if they still have the Old Label, thus still containing the original recipe... Still fairly common here in San Francisco
Long live the BSD license
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?
Beer mixed with coffee sounds quite horrible. In fact, anything mixed with beer does.
Only vodka and such pure liquors are good for mixing.
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.
How long has this been around? Probably as long as coke. So now they think it should be made illegal. Idiots.
No, sorry, the summary is really short on vital information. Rum'n'cokes are not on trial here. There is a standard called GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) that can be met, and rum'n'cokes fit this standard. And no one "thinks they should be illegal" - this is an announcement of a start of an investigation, not an announcement of a new law. That investigation MAY lead to a law, but it may not.
These are NOT rum'n'cokes they are talking about. "Sparks" (a Miller/Coors product), one of the products that is being reformulated, had as much alcohol as a can of beer but as much caffeine as a "stay awake" pill. The proportion of alcohol to caffeine is the issue. Think "rum'n'coke with a 'no-doz' pill chaser". Have a half-dozen of them and the caffeine will have you so hyped up you'll feel normal, or damned near it. A half a dozen rum'n'cokes would put you under the table - a half dozen of these little beauties would have you driving through the front door of the bar into the table while convinced that was your garage. Your coordination and function is shot to shit but you have enough energy to feel normal.
This is largely the same risk as people mixing Red Bull with alcohol, except in this case breweries are setting the proportions. You can't regulate stupid - college kids will always do stupid things like this - but at issue here is whether to ask companies to refrain from making this proportion intentionally. Faced with the evidence in the investigation, several manufacturers have voluntarily (as in, not under coercion from the Government) discontinued this class of caffeinated alcoholic beverages because of the possibility of accidental abuse due to the fact that the caffeine-to-alcohol ratio in these beverages tends to conceal the effects of the alcohol.
I'm not totally in favor of laws like this, but this isn't a law. At least not yet. It's an investigation that may or may not lead to a law. At that point, I'm still not sure about a law, but at least the risks would be identified and documented. Then manufacturers would probably just pull the product based on the information given before a law was even passed (and some of them already did!).
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
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.
I've honestly got to ask how you know this...
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
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.
I was once involved in a golden shower with Bazooka Joe.
[Citation Needed]
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
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>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_and_Drug_Administration_(United_States) Anything with less than 7% alcohol content are under the prevue of the FDA.
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.
Correlation is not causation! Wake up!!
Gee, thank you sir for debunking the "non scientific" study you fail to quote with - your gut feeling. I am enlightened.
On the other hand, as a doctor I can tell you that caffeine and taurine belong to the group of drugs called xanthines, whose pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic effects are very well known. Alcohol has also been studied intensively, to such a point where we know its myriad effects on the human body on a molecular level.
Now while we haven't actually asked for volunteers to submit themselves to studies where we try to kill them with a combination of xanthines and ethanol, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to look at the effects of both classes of drugs and see potential problems, especially in the areas of cardiac dysrhythmias, electrolyte imbalances, the dehydrating effect of both drugs, and the psychoactive effects of both drugs.
But I know that since you are incredibly wise, you have considered all the studies involved in all of the above, and have a pointed argument backed by clinically controlled trials to lay the foundation of your claims.
Correlation isn't causation, but do realize that when you have an avian that floats on water and quacks, you are probably observing a duck.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Worked for the cows!
Quack, quack.
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....
On the other hand, as a doctor I can tell you that caffeine and taurine belong to the group of drugs called xanthines, whose pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic effects are very well known.
Biochemistry and organic chem must no longer be prerequisites for med school... Taurine is not a xanthine. Not even remotely close to the same chemical class. And its pharmacodynamics are not well studied (other than some highly biased studies touting health benefits).
As for your support for the "science" behind the study, if you RTFA, you would see the experimental design was extremely weak. The number of confounding variables is staggering, not to mention huge potential for reporting bias, selection bias, etc. My interpretation of the data is that the kind of people who fall for energy drink marketing are the same kind of people who do stupid, dangerous things when they're drunk.
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.
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? 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.
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