While poking around, I came across this place selling caffeinated soap. (Caffeinated Soap?)
Ignoring the obvious for the moment, I notice that the page says that they cannot ship caffeine to Belgium or Sweden. Can someone tell me why this would be so? Is caffeine a controlled substance in Belgium or Sweden? Any Belgium or Swedish dopers know why?
I live in Sweden and was vaguely aware that there were some kind of regulation regarding caffeine. While I haven’t investigated this extensively, I believe you need a permit from the Swedish National Food Administration (“Livsmedelsverket”) in order to sell food with caffeine as an additive - that is, Coca-Cola have a permit but none is needed for regular coffee.
I doubt soap falls under their jurisdiction; ThinkGeek has probably decided on the above mentioned policy after trying to ship caffeinated soft drinks or candy to sweden.
According to my Swedish penpal, the reason things with high amounts of caffine are outlawed there is because people started mixing them with large amounts of alcohol and dying of related complications, so they slapped a ban on them. Now if we could only get them to outlaw Red Bull here in the States.
I remember the debate about alcohol and caffeinated drinks but I’m pretty sure Red Bull isn’t banned here in Sweden. It’s one of many soft drinks with the above mentioned permit, and as far as I know it’s still sold just about anywhere.
Red Bull is certainly not banned here (haven’t you seen those obnoxious TV commercials ending up with the phrase “Red Bull ger dig vingar”?) and I’ve never heard anything about restrictions concerning stuff containing caffein.
The issue was mixing energy drinks with alcohol; a few people in Sweden died… I forget the exact circumstances. However, Red Bull was not banned; neither was Battery, another energy drink. There are restrictions on the level of taurine in energy drinks, but not caffeine AFAIK.
Red Bull antaa siiiiiivet. 
It could be that the import restrictions are a paperwork headache they don’t want to deal with. That is, a supermarket in Sweden or Belgium could import and sell this stuff, and do so in large enough quantities to make it worthwhile. But for a website that’s going to be selling dribs and drabs of the stuff, and filling out a fresh set of paperwork for each order, it ain’t worth it.
I’m surprised though that they don’t mention problems shipping to Norway, which has more restrictive rules about food additives than most countries. Some energy drinks are legal in Sweden but illegal in Norway, for instance. (And from time to time the papers get a kick out of reporting a bunch of Norskie geeks caught smuggling caffeine across the border!) Yet none of the candies and such seem to be over the legal limit…
Well, now you have. Take a look at this document, especially the part under “Säljs under dispens”. It seems like there’s a pretty high limit (135 milligrams per liter) under which you do not need a permit. I didn’t know that, but it means Coca-Cola and Pepsi are not affected by this after all.
God Red Bull is disgusting, it smells like sick.
Tastes like it, too :D. 'course my addict co-workers on grave shift disagree. They suck it down like it was water. Myself I prefer the floridly colored, sickly sweet ambrosia that is Diet Mountain Dew to get me through the night ;).
Actually, I was just pulling the name Red Bull outta my ass as an example of a highly caffienated drink. I didn’t know for certain if that was one of them or not, and I was too tired to do a search to see which ones had been banned.