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FDA Questions Caffeinated Booze
Passing out after a long night out has been less of a problem thanks to the alcohol-infused energy drinks that have become available over the past few years. But on Friday, the Food and Drug Administration asked manufacturers to prove the safety of the reported drink of choice for a quarter of college students. Those who mix caffeine and alcohol are at a higher risk of injury than those who drink uncaffeinated alcohol, according to a Wake Forest University study. Last year, several state attorneys general successfully sued Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors to remove caffeine from two drinks. Now, the FDA is asking nearly 30 similar manufacturers to offer scientific proof that their products are safe within the next 30 days. The agency will review the manufacturers’ findings and determine whether the drinks can remain on the market.
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Nothing is more annoying than a wide awake drunk. Caffeinated Booze is rocket fuel for douche bags.
Please ban it, please.
Nothing is more annoying than a wide awake drunk on a late night road trip.
ARGH! So I guess a rum-and-coke is now a deadly combo? Puhleeze. Don't we have better things to be focusing on?
doesn't the FDA have bigger fish to fry?
Its called Irish Coffee
Sugar Cube
Coffee
Shot of Jameson or Bushmills depending on your taste and/or politics
Float a layer of unsweetened whipped cream on top
Yummm
Helped get me thru lawschool
Hey, you know what briansays-
That is exactly what it is ! Reminds me.
Gin and Tonic beats Irish Coffee.
Only the Irish would invent something that stupid.
Caffeinated alcoholic beverages are designed for one purpose-to induce people to drink even more by deceiving them into thinking that they're less intoxicated than they really are. Throw in a large portion of sugar, & you've got a product with a strong appeal to underage drinkers in High School, college, & the party circuit. These beverages are a public health hazard & a cruel hoax on the American public. They should be banned. The FDA is merely doing its job when it tries to police the irresponsible, greedy profit-seeking of Anheuser- Busch, Coors, et.al.
Of course, these potions of doom are just one symptom of the campaign which our government has aided & abetted for many decades. This campaign has gone to great lengths to persuade people to consume alcoholic beverages. To do so in the face of the abundant evidence of alcohol's health risks (alcohol is a prime causative factor in hepatic cirrhosis, GI bleeding, dementia, kidney failure, cardiomyopathy, & a host of other medical disorders; alcohol is a major causative factor in motor vehicle crashes; alcohol generally leads to disinhibited, impulsive, aggressive behavior like fights & rapes; etc.) is nothing short of immoral. Of course, this mischief is undertaken in pursuit of the profit motive, & few politicians have the integrity or courage to tell the alcoholic beverage companies to stop their camapaign donations.
Yes, America is the victim of a massive campaign to persuade people to get drunk, in order to increase somebody's profits. As if this were not bad enough, the same people who are pushing alcohol on our impressionable youth are at the same time promulgating outrageous lies about another, far safer recreational drug- marijuana. Their goal is to scare people away from marijuana & push them to use alcohol instead. The only reason they do this is because they won't make as much money if people switch their preference to the safer drug.
Every day I go to the hospital & witness firsthand the devastation wrought by alcohol. On the other hand, marijuana is a very benign substance which is far easier to use responsibly (vs. alcohol) for those members of our society who choose to exercise their right to enjoy recreational drug use.
Rational public policy should accurately reflect the relative dangerousness of these two substances. Our current laws fail to do so. Several states have been far ahead of the federal govt. in correcting this injustice.
Banning caffeinated alcoholic beverages, banning advertising of alcoholic beverages (done years ago for cigarettes), increasing penalties for alcohol-related offenses, decriminalizing personal possession of up to 2 oz. of marijuana, & substituting treatment measures for the failed "War on Drugs" are all steps in the right direction which are seriously overdue,
Next you'll be pushing for criminalizing the sale of espresso and alcohol in the same establishment.
If we started teaching our children at a young age that alcohol can be enjoyed and used responsibly, we would not have the problems we do. People that have problems with alcohol (or any drug) should be provided treatment or find a drug that they do not have a problem with.
Only recently have Italians begun to have teen drinking problems and apparently it was binge drinking they learned from US and British youth.
My career as a physician (including 15 years as the Medical Director of an Alcohol & Drug Detox Unit) has given me a perspective on this issue which is more enlightened than those who have never been responsible for treating patients. This enables me to appreciate the fallacies in your comments.
Your claim that simply teaching children about alcohol at a young age is enough to prevent large scale alcohol abuse is, at best, shockingly naive. Among the many factors greatly influenced by genetics is how different people's brains respond to intoxicating substance such as alcohol. Probably about 10% of the human race is genetically hard-wired to continue drinking to intoxication (often blacking out and/or vomiting in the process) once they ingest a SINGLE drink. No amount of education, during childhood or otherwise, will keep these poor souls out of trouble once they start drinking. So, yes, it is appropriate that we do everything humanly possible (within the framework of a free society where recreational substances can be legal) to prevent people from being seduced by these potions of doom. Countries where alcohol is consumed routinely from a young age have rates of cirrhosis & other alcohol-related conditions at rates far higher than in the US. With a focus on our at-risk youth, one needs to consider that young people have (on the average) worse impulse control than do more mature adults, so it is dangerous to expose them to massive amounts of temptation- pushing alcohol on young people leads to trouble, especially when packaged in products which try to disguise their intoxicating properties by adding caffeine. Young people are also much more susceptible to peer pressure, so that every problem drinker we create is likely to share their abuse with their friends, classmates, & co-workers.
My major point was that if some people are going to want a recreational drug, it is irresponsible & immoral to push these people to select alcohol rather than marijuana.
Only once our society begins to correctly treat alcohol as a more dangerous drug than marijuana will we have a chance to make a significant dent in the massive public health problems created by alcohol. Allowing caffeinated alcoholic beverages to flood the market & seduce young people is a bad idea.
The merchants of alcohol are afraid to let the truth be told about the relative risks of alcohol vs. marijuana because it might reduce their profits. Their handiwork leads to more deaths, more injuries, more illnesses, more rapes, more violent crime, etc. I cannot tolerate such selfish behavior. What I'd like to see is a fair & open society-wide discussion of the relative merits & drawbacks of these two drugs. Far from wanting to ban the sale of espresso and grappa at trattorias, all I want is to give people a fair chance to make WELL-INFORMED choices. People should have the right to do anything they want as long as they don't hurt anyone else in the process. Alcohol causes much more harm than does marijuana. Our laws should reflect this reality.
When you have to sit down & talk to the family of someone who was killed by a drunk driver or try to comfort the woman who was raped by a drunken classmate, it teaches you certain lessons.
DoctorB - you may very well be the most enlightened doctor in the world about the evils and abuses of alcohol and what happens to a human body that consumes it.
If one is "hardwired to continue drinking to intoxication...." wouldn't it be prudent for a family to be aware of that at a younger age when parents would have time to deal with it? Some wine with dinner could be an early indicator for children.
"cirrhosis & other alcohol-related conditions at rates far higher than in the US" do you have some supporting data? regardless, which countries you are referring to?
"Young people are also much more susceptible to peer pressure" that is my point, if at a young age, a child knows that they have issues with alcohol, they may be less susceptible to the peer pressure you refer to.
"pushing alcohol on young people leads to trouble" I would think this would be illegal. I am not sure what or who you are saying is pushing alcohol and to whom they are pushing it.
"Only once our society begins to correctly treat alcohol as a more dangerous drug"
We tried this once and it was one of the worst things to happen to this country "Prohibition"
"WELL-INFORMED choices" comes from early childhood education. Consider how screwed up sex education is in this country.
I agree with much that you say but it is imperative that children are not sheltered and then sent to the world without education. This applies to many areas where the US has failed or at least has done a miserable job of informing their youth.
FInance- How many of our young adults leave the home, get sucked into the credit card nightmare that our wonderful financial institutions entice them to use. I am not sure if they teach any of this in schools nowadays. Credit Card 101, Balancing the checkbook 101, etc. If schools and families taught this early young people would be better prepared.
Sex Education-In my day parents would not discuss sex with their children, all of my closest friends knocked up their girlfriends in high school. Maybe 1 out of 5 of the marriages survived. It continues today in our society, lack of knowledge at an early age results in problems later in life.
Alcohol and Drugs- I firmly believe that if a child has a propensity to abuse alcohol and you learn about it at an age where a parent still has some control that the later effects may be mitigated by educating the child that alcohol may not be an appropriate recreational drug.
Exposure to the one of the forms of the heptitis virus is THE causative factor of hepatic cirrhosis. Nutritional -- aka, portal -- cirrhosis is the form associated with alcohol ingestion.
Considering the amount of alcohol consumed, and the number of consumers, it seems your assertion that "alcohol generally leads to disinhibited, impulsive, aggressive behavior like fights & rapes; etc." is a dubious one. While alcohol may increase the tendency toward aggression, If this were 'generally' the result, you and your hospital coworkers would never get out of the emergency room.
That alcohol causes disinhibited & impulsive behavior is an unassailable medical fact. Not all behavioral disinhibition has to be as extreme or starting a fight or committing rape; unfortunately, behavioral disinhibition short of assault or rape is not necessarily benign! How many avoidable arguments has alcohol caused? Trillions. How many relationships have been ruined by alcohol? Hundreds of millions. What percentage of violent crime is directly alcohol-related? More than half. Most auto fatalities would not occur without alcohol. A teenager is miore likely to be killed in an alcohol-related crash than by any medical illness.
It is unfortunate that so many people see alcohol's disinhibiting effect as desirable. If alcohol did not have this effect, it would never have become so popular over the centuries. I can't count the number of people who have sought to rationalize their drinking problems by insisting that they merely use it as a social lubricant; most of these people are self-medicating with alcohol for an underlying Anxiety Disorder.
Marijuana does not cause these problems. Hence, it is absolutely wrong for our society, government, & media to spend so much time, money, & effort promoting the use of alcohol while simultaneously promulgating lies about marijuana designed to scare people away from use of a safe & benign natural plant product.
Just give people the facts & let them make WELL-INFORMED choices. If we ever really permit that, the inevitable outcome will be that more people choose pot & fewer choose booze. Society would benefit. It is the greed of the alcohol industry & the misguided efforts of ignorant anti-drug crusaders that enables perpetuation of the folly of manipulating people to choose booze over pot. They know they're wrong & they're afraid of people like myself who insist the the truth be told.
Over 100 million Americans have tried pot & we see no epidemic of illness among this cohort. In a perfect world, no one would ever want to try any recreational drug, but since humans' brains are endowed with a region known as the Nucleus Acumbens, we are genetically programmed to seek pleasure; hence, recreational drug use has been part of the human experience for thousands of years. If some p[eople are going to catch a buzz on something, better that it be marijuana rather than alcohol.
If pot were to replace alcohol as the nation's most popular recreational drug, my job would be a lot easier!
So we can all become useless stoners. Great.
Manticore- Your comment demonstrates a lack of awareness of the psychological effects of alcohol vs. marijuana.
It is abundantly clear that alcohol causes both short-term (disinhibition of aggressive & sexual impulses) & long-term (personality changes, mood lability, dementia) effects on human behavior & thinking which are quite dangerous, both to the drinker & everyone around that person.
Marijuana does nothing of the sort. There is no objective evidence to support your narrow-minded assertion that all pot smokers "become useless stoners." In fact, your claim is belied by the experience of the 100 million Americans who have smoked marijuana. We do not see a large scale incidence of ANY marijuana-related psychiatric problem. I personally know dozens of people who smoke pot; far from being "useless" as you claim, these are all people who would be considered very productive, successful, & high-functioning- physicians, college professors, lawyers, engineers, accountants, architects. They work 50- 60 hours/week, & are regarded as thought leaders- writing books, giving lectures, & mentoring the next generation of trainees & scholars in their fields. These are some of the greatest minds around, & they find pot helpful rather than harmful. I know, because they are my colleagues & my friends.
Only a person who is ignorant and/or too lazy to properly investigate the scientific evidence could make a statement like yours, Manticore.
You need to try a little pot. Maybe it would help your brain work a little better. It can certainly use all the help it can get.
The world is imperfect.
We send kids off to war, where they could get blown up, emotionally damaged, what have you, before they reach the age when we allow them to enjoy a drink in a dignified manner, leading them to drink in cars or parks, creating a totally different atmosphere and chain of planning behaviour, than if they were allowed to have a social drink with dinner or what have you.
That the world is imperfect hardly justifies efforts to make it MORE imperfect. Alcohol is legal for those 21 & over. A person can buy enough alcohol to kill themselves. It is easy to be a chronic alcoholic who has ruined their health at a young age without ever breaking any law. Do we have too many restrictions on alcohol consumption? Hardly.
Contrast that with a far safer recreational drug, pot. So you cry about kids who drink in cars or parks? What is much worse are misguided, obsolete policies which make criminals out of all 100 million Americans who have responsibly & safely enjoyed marijuana. The war on drugs has been a colossal failure. This ill-conceived crusade flies in the face of all our scientific knowledge & is maintained purely as political pandering to the Religious right.
Ban caffeinated alcoholic beverages? Yes!
Criminalize personal use of marijuana? No!
Thank you.
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