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:Mines a vodka and red bull... (Score:5, Interesting)
Or will they start monitoring in stores now that you wont buy vodka and red bull at the same time?
It's also interesting that alcohol is being kept legal while it has a lot more health issues than like cannabis, like heart disease, dementia, cancer, alcoholism, diabetes, strokes and then the usual ones like hangover and weight problems. It seems it should be other way around.
That being said, I prefer good vodka (Russian Standard Vodka) over beer any day. Usually the best mix is just some smashed ice and lime. I used to mix with red bull, but it tastes like shit now.
Jack and Coke? (Score:3, Interesting)
Since Coke is probably the single most common dark mixer, a lot of bartenders are going to be peeved over this one.
Re:Shoot, there goes my Irish Coffee. Is Decafe ok (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:SPARKS! (Score:2, Interesting)
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
Re:Shoot, there goes my Irish Coffee. Is Decafe ok (Score:3, Interesting)
Potential disaster or not, as long as people are making an informed and deliberate choice I fail to see the need for government action.
Re:Mines a vodka and red bull... (Score:5, Interesting)
I found the comment at the end of this article [news.com.au] very telling (even if it is about Australia, not the U.S.):
"Dealers often advertise this drug as being like ecstasy but its properties are much more similar to cocaine and amphetamines," said Professor Iain McGregor, director of Sydney University's Psychopharmacology Laboratory. "Users get feelings of euphoria, it's dancey, it's happy, a bit trippy.
"Unfortunately for people like myself and Paul (Dillon), who are here to tell people drugs are bad, there doesn't appear to be a whole lot that is bad about it."
You heard it here first, folks. It's 'unfortunate' for the regulators when there "doesn't appear to be a whole lot that is bad about" a mood altering substance.
Re:Mines a vodka and red bull... (Score:1, Interesting)
Two words, dude. Sustainable cannibalism.
I have a friend who has a rare disease of the internal organs. Every few months he has to go to the doctor, who takes a big chunk of his liver for testing. Between tests, it GROWS BACK like crabgrass.
So how about making human liver from living donors a viable food source? I figure as long as we don't those who eat donated liver also donate their livers to eat, it's all good.
Pffft... (Score:1, Interesting)
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"
Re:Mines a vodka and red bull... (Score:3, Interesting)
To be honest, alcohol is one of the worst drugs for the fact that it's one of the most addictive (compare, e.g. with THC/Cannabis, Psylocibin/'Shrooms or LSD, which are not addictive), most toxic and socially most destructive (because it increases agressiveness).
Yet alcohol is 100% legal in any amounts, and all other drugs (of which some are safe and actually beneficial (e.g. THC is a powerful antidepressant and apparently improves the condition of Alzheimer's patients)) are 100% illegal in any amounts.
Yeah, baby! (Score:3, Interesting)
As we all know, absinthe doth make the tart grow fonder.
Cheers,
Dave
Re:Mines a vodka and red bull... (Score:3, Interesting)
Back in the mid-70s, when I was young, I made a great discovery: first, have a shot of tequila, mano a mano and back it up with a glass of Mexican Coffee. (Like Irish, but with tequila instead of Irish whiskey.) When that's empty, get a refill on both. The tequila gets you drunk and the coffee gets you wired, resulting in a weird, wide awake drunk. I won't talk about how I'd feel the next morning, however.
Re:Mines a vodka and red bull... (Score:3, Interesting)
Probably none. They're fat, not muscular. Eating bodybuilders, on the other hand, may pan out in a crisis.
Re:Mines a vodka and red bull... (Score:3, Interesting)
Also pot will make you sterile (low sperm count) with excessive use. Alcoholics on the other hand... Well, we all know that story. If your addicted rampantly to something I'd rather you were sterile and not hurting the human race by reproducing.
And I'm against simply legalizing pot and keeping alcohol because I believe recreational drugs are counter-productive to society. If your bored, do something creative, learn new talents, volunteer, find ways to contribute. Kids who play video games to counter boredom often times grow up to be scientists or programmers. Kids who do drugs grow up to ring up your order, have too many kids who have a shitty childhood, and also supply drugs to people who shouldn't get it. Additionally, many people unfortunately use government laws as their moral compass; legalizing a drug is one way of saying "society says its ok". Ok, it our laws shouldn't be saying that, but we outlaw so many things that are even remotely dangerous that that is what our laws have become. If its legal, then it must be safe and there must be nothing wrong with it.
Re:Mines a vodka and red bull... (Score:4, Interesting)
You consider the White House to be a valid source on illegal drug use stats? That sounds about as valid as a study from Mr. Kalashnikov showing that AK47s are the best machine guns available. I'd trust numbers from the DEA before the White House - they're just enforcing the policies, not trying to shove their importance down everyone's throats.
Maybe it's a regional thing, but I'd guess it's closer to 20-30% around here. If you were to look only at people between 17-25, it's probably 60%+.
Of course, it also depends how you quantify "use". Daily? Once a week? A month? A year? Ever?
Re:Mines a vodka and red bull... (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree. It has worked awesome. At only the cost of a billions on dollars, literally hundreds of thousands of deaths, the funding of black markets, and the countless ruined lives for minor drug offenses, we have done a great job making it so that only about 10% of the population is criminal at any one time for using a basically harmless drug that ranks below caffeine and alcohol in terms of side effectives. Mission accomplished! We are winning the war on drugs!
Re:Misrepresentation of data! (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Correlation does not impy causation (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Mines a vodka and red bull... (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course it's his job. Here in the UK, the government's scientific advisor on drugs was foolish enough to advise based on the actual science. He got sacked as a result.