I think the biggest worry is that, because of the stimulant effect of the caffeine, drinkers won’t notice just how drunk they’re getting until too late. That’s bad enough with alcohol alone, even before you mix it with a stimulant.
Some capitalist will start marketing regular old caffeine pills with ads pointing out that caffeinated brew is now illegal. "Get the same effect with new Brewski Tabs. The legal stimulant made for the weekend drinker"
When they ban that kind of marketing Legal Stim brand caffeine pills will hire Lee Ermy as spokesman: "Whatever you do, DO NOT take Legal Stim while consuming alcohol. This could allow you to drink all night. That would break my heart!"
How long before we’re on here talking about the outright ban on caffeine pills?
It probably does if they can’t survive vomit.
The closest thing I can think of to 4L is the popular drink jagerbomb which was unofficially linked to health problems to the point some bars banned them. What limits the amount of jagerbombs consumed is the price. 4L is a high octane drink aimed at young consumers who are lean on money and haven’t learned know how to drink responsibly.
Where did you get your data? One can is 23.5 ounces and 12% alcohol (which I already mentioned). Let’s compare to Budweiser, which is 5% alcohol (conservative; there are stronger beers). So that can has the same alchohol as 4.7 cans of Bud. That’s also the equivalent of 4.7 shots of liquor, assuming 1.5-ounce shots of 80-proof liquor (like Absolut or Jack Daniels). That’s about half your estimate. The maker has not published the caffeine content and nobody seems to have done the analysis, so if you have figures from a quant lab you could be the first to publish it.
I never said I was shocked. Did I say I was shocked? I’m not shocked. I’m not in college anymore. Haven’t been for 30 years. My kids are only 12 & 14. Just wondering what the ground truth is for what people 18-25 are doing to fuck themselves up these days.
I’ll be happy to continue that discussion in Great Debates, but “Land of the Free” does not mean “Free to do whatever the fuck you want regardless of what the effect is on you or anyone else.” It means, you know, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, stuff like that.
I don’t support a ban on this stuff, but the Bill of Rights is not the argument against a ban. There are some bans with very weak opposition, like selling heroin or performing heart surgery if you’re not a doctor. Nobody tries to say that those bans take our freedoms away. But when it hits closer to home (I want to…not wear a motorcycle helmet, smoke marijuana, jump off a skyscraper with a parachute) people raise their pseudo-patriotic hue and cry about personal freedom.
Yes, it’ll always be possible to mix alcohol and caffeine, but putting the onus on the consumer to do that means they’re less likely to just throw back several cans without thinking about it.
It’s dumb. I used to drink jagerbombs all the time (like 6-8 a weekend) and I never got ill. Well, no more ill than a hangover involving non-caffeinated liquor anyway.
I live off of Red Bull and Vodka out at bars since I have a tendency to fall asleep. It wouldn’t be unusual for me to drink 2-3 an hour for 6-8 hours. Each of them has 2-3 shots of vodka in them.
I don’t see how this is any different then 4loco not to mention it’s a whole lot easier to buy a cheap gallon of vodka at the store and then get your hands on energy drinks separately then it is to buy cases of premixed drinks plus it’s probably cheaper to mix yourself.
I can heartily recommend that people not smoke dust after candy flipping and drinking. It gets weird quick. Caffeine I wouldn’t be as concerned about.
Worst case scenario, 3 drinks with 3 shots per drink for 8 hours is 72 shots. Seriously? According to bloodalcoholcalculator.org, 72 shots in 8 hours in a 150 pound male gives you a BAC of 1.816, which is over 3 times the BAC it takes to cause death.
Screw death. What do those cost? A drink with 3 shots is going to be at least $8, so 3/hour for 8 hours is going to cost nearly $200 without tips.
Fact is, banning these drinks will have no effect except on our liberty.
*Underagers will still get insanely drunk
*Alcohol poisoning will not decline
*Alcohol caused sexual assaults will not be reduced.
*Drunk driving will not go down.
*Alcohol cases in the ER will not decline
*Drunk college students will still tumble down the bluffs into the Missippippi River in La Cross, WI and their delusional parents will still blame an invisible mass murderer (look it up knowitall!).
And, 2 years from now, there will be some other alcohol based fad that dumb asses will be doing (like catheterizing their urethra and squirting straight grain alcohol up into their bladder) that some do gooders will be screaming about.
Carrie Nation is fucking dead and burning in hell, folks. Give this shit a rest and have a good strong, STRONG drink!
Well past due to migrate to IMHO.
My take is simple. These drinks are designed, produced and marketed with no other purpose than to be bought by young and underage drinkers with the express purpose of their getting drunk fast. You can argue the margins about the difference between them and a bottle of cheap spirit and some no-doze, but the difference between a mass marketed drink and the backdoor mixing of drugs is a big step.
Over here the high school graduates are in the midst of the summer celebration. Schoolies week, where many thousands of kids celebrate the end of their school life (until those that will go onto tertiary education.) Summer, beaches, and a hell of a lot of drinking. Almost all of it by underage kids. Here the drinking age is 18. The majority of these kids will be 17. This is the market for these caffeine alcohol drinks. The possibility of a solid week of partying for kids just out of school.
You have to ask yourself what you think of a person/company that decides that they will cynically make money with the express intent of creating and marketing a drink that is intended to get 17 years olds drunk as fast as possible. Sure, kids have been messing about with alcohol forever. But there is a point where any reasonable ethics would suggest that a limit has been reached. A few kids smuggling a bottle of scotch and getting paralytic is not the same as a mass marketed drink with the suggestion of tacit condolence by the society at large.
Modern society has very few controls of such actions. We are so legally log-jammed in our perceptions that everything seems to require a legal answer. So rather than calling out the slime that has such an unethical and anti-social view of the world, we are left with little else but to feebly ban the product. Personally I would like to have seen the pillory brought back into service.
Alcoholic fatalities are on the decline.
Not because of banning these drinks.