Caffeinated Alcoholic Drinks May Be Illegal 398
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."
Re:Shoot, there goes my Irish Coffee. Is Decafe ok (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Shoot, there goes my Irish Coffee. Is Decafe ok (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Buzz Beer! (Score:3, Informative)
Beer mixed with coffee sounds quite horrible. In fact, anything mixed with beer does.
Only vodka and such pure liquors are good for mixing.
Re:Mines a vodka and red bull... (Score:3, Informative)
It's an untested drug. Its effects on the body have never been studied. People are taking it anyway, and regulators don't have an easy warning to tell users to get them to stop taking it.
FDA-approved prescription medications have a long enough history of terrifying mistakes. If there's a place to take a stand for conscientious drug use, it's not here.
Re:Shoot, there goes my Irish Coffee. Is Decafe ok (Score:4, Informative)
Less than one. [wikipedia.org]
Re:Just try and take my Espresso Stout away!!! (Score:5, Informative)
I don't see what all the commotion is about. We know how science works, and that is exactly what the FDA is trying to do. They assume the null hypothesis (new products may be unsafe) until proven otherwise- or at least until they know the risks and can make in informed decision. These manufacturers knew they had to get FDA approval, but didn't. This wouldn't be a problem if the beer companies did their homework.
Most importantly, the FDA is saying it is illegal to make these products without approval not to make these products at all, ever. If the mix is as safe as people believe it to be, there won't be a problem.
Re:Mines a vodka and red bull... (Score:4, Informative)
7% use illegal drugs (White House), and that includes marijuana.
yeah, so consider the source. A recent survey here in NH found 11% freely admitting to pollsters that they smoke weed.
Re:Mines a vodka and red bull... (Score:3, Informative)
We tried banning cannabis, cocaine, heroin, and a laundry list of other drugs as well. It hasn't worked out any better.
That's simply not true. It's provided tremendous revenue for black ops government entities that don't officially exist, has kept the military industrial complex well fed, the US at a constant state of 'war' and provided cover for a creeping police state.
It's worked out tremendously (unless you care about quaint things like rule-of-law).
Re:Mines a vodka and red bull... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Jack and Coke? (Score:3, Informative)
Most of the drinks in question are not the functional equivalent of a rum and coke. We're talking more along the lines of a no-doze with a shot of rum as a chaser.
Thanks, you pushed me to look up the numbers [energyfiend.com].
Bud Extra seems to have 54mg of caffeine in a 10-oz can (CSPI settlement document.)
A No-Doze has 200mg of caffeine.
Coke Classic is 2.8mg/oz, or in a half-can mixed drink 16.8mg, so that's indeed not equivalent.
However, drip coffee is 18.1mg/oz (I know, overly precise for an average).
The top two google recipes for Irish Coffee call for 6 or 8 oz. Taking the conservative 6, that nets 109mg caffeine and one oz whisky, which should be about the same alcohol as a can of beer.
So, Irish coffee is double the concentration of caffeine to alcohol as the Bud product. If you can figure out when coffee beans were first imported to Ireland, you'll know when the first Irish coffee was made (perhaps without the sugar and cream - that appears to be a US thing from the mid 20th century.)
Re:The thing about cannabis... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Alcohol is "food" now? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Misrepresentation of data! (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Mines a vodka and red bull... (Score:3, Informative)
We tried banning cannabis, cocaine, heroin, and a laundry list of other drugs as well. It hasn't worked out any better.
Actually, out of all of those the only one we've banned is pot. The others are restricted, but legally available from your local pharmacy.
I don't believe that heroin is legally available even by prescription, at least not in the U.S. It's a Schedule I controlled substance [wikipedia.org], here which means, among other things, that:
(A) The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse.
(B) The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.
You're right about cocaine, though; it's sometimes still used as a local anesthetic.
Re:Mines a vodka and red bull... (Score:5, Informative)
Not only is it physically addictive, it's also one of the few substances who's withdrawal symptoms can kill you [wikipedia.org].
Re:Mines a vodka and red bull... (Score:5, Informative)
Cocaine is, in fact, the only local I know of that can be used in the eye. Go ask an eye surgeon how much cocaine they use in a month. It'll be a non-trivial amount, and absurdly pure, but unfortunately also metered to an extraordinary fineness, and covered with seals and signatures ten ways to Sunday.
There's actually a chemical plant in New Jersey that provides all of the US G'vmt's legal cocaine supply. They give the post-processed leaves to Coca-Cola for extraction of the infamous non-active ingredients afterwords. It's a fun research topic.
Vicodin vs. Morphine vs. Heroin (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Extended effects (Score:1, Informative)
I have been taking considerable amounts of LSD for many many years
There is no ongoing mental effects or "Flash backs". That is made up and hammered into the minds of people who have not tried it.
Do you think maybe the effects of the chemo and all of the other things you were taking may have had any impact?
My father just got out of hospital after spending two weeks in there for chemo and stem-cell replacement, and he is still a bit out of it without any Marinol.