Those drinks that are targeted at young people (high alcohol plus caffeine) seem to be dangerous. There have been several cases of alcohol poisoning, and several near deaths caused by injudicious consumption of these drinks.
Several states , cities, and colleges have banned such drinks-is this legal?
I mean, you can legally purchase 90% alcohol (“Everclear”) and make your own such drinks-why should a manufacturer be punished by selling a legal product?
By the time you reach college age, you should be capable of making personal judgements-so is it wise to ban such products?
You can’t buy Everclear in every state. PA no longer sells it.
It is not unconstitutional to ban drinks with high alcohol content.
Amendment 21, Section 2:
“The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.”
So if someone makes a law banning some sort of intoxicating liquor, and you violate it, it seems that action is unconstitutional.
I’m not a lawyer, and I have no legal training, and I hope a real lawyer chimes in, but this does seem pretty cut and dry. The states can do whatever they want with regard to regulating alcohol.
IANAL, but I don’t see how a ban on this crap would be unconstitutional. Maybe if it was a federal ban as opposed to a state ban only because the 21st amendment seems to create a bunch of exceptions to the Interstate Commerce Clause.
Keep in mind that a state can completely ban the sale, possession, or even consumption of all alcohol within it’s borders. Plenty of states allow counties & municipalities to ban the sale of alcohol within the church borders, and Alaska also allows local authorities to ban possession & consumption of alcohol.
Since RadicalPi answered your question, can I ask what drinks you’re referring to that are high in alcohol content? The controversial drinks I know of are actually low alcohol, but with caffeine. They’re like wine with caffeine or very alcoholic beer with caffeine.
I think a lot of people believe that the 21st Amendment made the use of alcohol a Constitutional right. It did not. All it did was repeal the federal ban. States, counties and municipalities are still free to regulate or ban alcoholic sales all they want, so yes, it is Constitutional to ban them.
“High alcohol content” is actually a subjective term.
Most (all?
) of those drinks containing alcohol+caffeine derive their alcohol via fermented malt. Therefore, legally, they are beer. On average a “regular” beer (Pabst Blue Ribbon, Bud, Miller High Life, etc.) have 4.5-5% alcohol content. Many of the caffeine+alcohol drinks I’ve seen have 8, 9, 10, even 12% alcohol. That’s 50% to 2.5 times the alcohol of regular beer. So considering that they are actually beer, they are high in alcohol.
Comparing them to 40% alcohol content grain alcohols like vodka or Whiskey is a different story. But who’s chugging bourbon like one does a beer?:eek:
I don’t really see the big deal. Some people are going to get drunk if they have to down massive quantities of light beer, do shots of whiskey, or drink mouthwash. What does it matter what they use? Some people are just trying to find a scapegoat for the irresponsible behavior of young drunks!
Four Loko is 12% alcohol by volume, and it’s served in 23.5 ounce cans, so that brand packs a wallop. Considering they taste like soda pop (not that I’ve ever had one, but that’s what I’ve been told) and the effects of the alcohol aren’t felt immediately, it’s fairly easy to see how an inexperienced drinker – which most college students are – would wind up with alcohol poisoning. It’s also cheap (about $2 a can), which adds to its appeal.
You may not be a lawyer but you hit exactly on it. One minor mistake it doesn’t SEEM to create exceptions it actually DOES create exceptions.
The courts have held alcohol to have a different standard simply because of the 21st Amendment.
Whether or not this standard is good or bad is open for debate, but the fact is there are seperate standards regarding alcohol.
I beg to differ. Restriction of certain alcoholic beverages is certainly in the best interest of universities, as well as in the students who attend them.
Some forms of alcohol tend to be self-limiting. Light beer will send you to the bathroom or make you throw up before you get into serious intoxication. Whiskey shots tend to be expensive (around five bucks a pop at a bar, or $20 bucks a bottle at a liquor store), and therefore out of the budget of most students. Mouthwash is, well, mouthwash, and anyone drinking that probably needs rehab.
Alcoholic energy drinks, like the above-mentioned Four Loko, are a different matter. They appeal to younger people, who are generally not experienced drinkers. They are strong compared to most beers, are in larger packaging, and have the caffeine to mask the effects of the alcohol, which encourages the drinker to drink more because, hey, this isn’t so bad. It doesn’t take much to send someone into alcohol poisoning.
Alcohol poisoning, BTW, can be, and often is fatal. I hate the idea of a nanny state as much as anyone, but considering that undergraduates aren’t known for sophistication or good judgment when it comes to alcohol, I’d have to side with the unis on this one.
Many wines run between 10% and 18% alcohol. Some people can drink one hell of a lot of wine.
And banning these sorts of drinks is silly. People have been mixing Red Bull with liquor for years. Banning the premixed ones just makes people rely on self-mixed ones that they don’t know the exact alcohol content of. Mixing caffeine with alcohol is effective for the kind of partying that people want to do today, and so it’s not going to be gotten rid of short of banning both caffeine and liquor.
Sorry, I don’t buy it.
I’m 50 and went to college back when these high octane+caffeine drinks did not exist. I saw oodles of people countless times get completely smashed on light beer, regular beer, and whiskey, vodka, etc…
I’ve been in law enforcement for 28+ years and have dealt with oodles of people (including those that had to be treated for poisoning) who were smashed out of their mind on beer, light beer, and grain spirits.
You’re self limiting theory doesn’t hold water to my actual observations. I’ve dealt with plenty of people who drank themselves to serious danger on nothing more than Bud or Miller light beer.
Ban one form of it and people will drink another form (even to dangerous excess) especially if they are of legal drinking age. It is my observations that Underagers will drink whatever they can get their hands on.
And one can still buy a litter bottle of store brand (Roundys) 80 proof whiskey, vodka, gin, and brandy for about $7. How is that self limiting? In fact, I saw a liter bottle of rum at the discount liquor store in Milwaukee for $5.99.
I do agree with your observation regarding drinking mouthwash. But brother, I see it all the time. I kid you not!
Carlo Rossi Sangria is 10%, cheap, and sweet as hell. It’s real easy to chug that stuff, ice cold, like soda and be consuming double the ethanol of beer.
Jolt Cola and brandy? Mountain Dew and gin? Coffee with whiskey in it? For Petes sake, alcohol and caffeine has always been consumed. It just took a while for some capitalists to market the pre-mixed idea. Banning them is silly and will be completely ineffectually.
And, BTW, I’ve tried a couple of them. I thought they were hideous! Blech!:eek:
Right, that’s my point; banning alcohol failed once, and banning caffeine would be even harder.
Also, Jolt and brandy? Mountain Dew and gin? Who thought that would be a good idea?
I have heard that there are a few basic ways to cover the taste of alcohol-- carbonation, cold, sugar, and citrus. These drinks hit three of the four, and that’s nothing that a college kid mixing drinks at a party doesn’t know.
IIRC, the constitution only mentions mead and spiced wine.
It’s not quite as big of thing as it used to be, but brandy is still a huge staple to the Wisconsin drinker. And brandy & cola (usually Coke, but also Pepsi and even Jolt) is a frequently ordered mixer.
I grew up in a city north of Milwaukee. When I first became legal to drink in the 70’s I remember just as many people in the bars drinking brandy and cola as beer! You’d drink a few of those and then go home and fight for sleep. Actually you’d just lay there and twitch!
Drinking a whole bottle of wine, or two (yep, done that!) will get you drunk, but you’ll *know *you’re drunk. Problem with high volumes of caffeine and alcohol together is that the caffeine masks the subjective symptoms of being drunk (giddiness, dizziness, brain fog, etc.) but doesn’t do squat to inhibit the biophysical ones (like shutting down the breathing centers of the brain). So what ends up happening is you don’t feel drunk at all until you can have passed the point of no return…by which I mean, you stop breathing and die.
Now, the makers of Four Loko haven’t, as far as I know, released the caffeine content of their drink. But if other, non-alcoholic, energy drinks are representative, then we’re talking four to five times the caffeine of Coke by volume. This has a much greater intoxication masking level than two Rum ‘n’ Cokes, with equivalent alcohol content.
Will banning it work? No, probably not. The cat’s out of the bag, and yeah, kids are just going to keep mixing Monsters and Everclear and drink stupid.
As always with fun ways to kill yourself, I think the answer is clear, honest and non-fearmongering education, instead. I’ve had to be the asshole adult in charge, telling kids not to drink while I have a glass of wine in my hand. What I’ve found to be the most persuasive is telling them the biophysical effects of alcohol and caffeine and provide advice on sensible, safe drinking instead. This has done far more than our previous attempts to ban booze in our social circle, both for the teens and for the adults. Teens, despite what we think about them, are not stupid. Give them real information that doesn’t sound like you’re equating energy/alcohol drinks to crack cocaine, and they’ll get it.
If you want to get drunk, drink alcohol. If you find you’ve gone too far and you want to stay up, by all means drink a Monster or a couple of cups of coffee…but then stop drinking the alcohol. It’s not about being a killjoy, it’s about staying alive to party another night.
Not all of them. You can pass along information, but not wisdom. Sometimes you have to give the ball to Darwin.
Sure. But I think more will “get it” with real information than will “get it” by scare tactics and banning. The truly Darwinworthy won’t get it either way, but at least we can reach the others.
Scare tactics just lessen credibility and bans never work on anything. Name one thing that’s banned that someone can’t actually get their hands on.
This is sort of similar to the silliness they’re pulling around here. Municipalities are passing ordinances against K2 (synthetic marijuana). In some places the citations for possessing fake dope are more expensive than the cites for having real pot. Both are municipal tickets, not criminal charges.
If the penalty for having fake pot is more than for having real pot, guess what people are going to do? Thus, keeping the criminal element involved in getting people high, which they are going to do regardless of the penalties.