First the tobacco ban, and now this...

[RobsanX]

By EMILY FREDRIX, AP Business Writer 3 minutes ago

MILWAUKEE - Twenty-five states asked beverage maker MillerCoors LLC on Wednesday to abandon plans for a new caffeine-infused alcoholic energy drink.
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Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said in a statement that the Sparks Red drink is a "recipe for disaster" because adding caffeine to alcoholic beverages reduces drinkers' sense of intoxication.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080917/..._energy_drinks

Vote all of these idiots out, and let them go back to being someone else's nanny...

[chainsnuser]

adding caffeine to alcoholic beverages reduces drinkers' sense of intoxication.

I knew it ... and I'm off to make some coffee...

Cheers!

[Xobeloot]

Who needs caffeine to lower their sense of intoxication? Isnt that what cocaine is for? :lol:


But seriously, I thought all the sparks drinks already had caffeine in them? I love sparks black for a pick-me up while out on the town.

Edit: Yep, just looked it up. The stuff already on the market contains caffeine, taurine, and ginseng. 6%alc for orange and 7%alc for black.

[snusjus]

Well... I'm eighteen years old and drink beer 3-4 times a week. I have seen people with Sparks and never had any desire to try it. I rarely see under-agers drinking Sparks; they mainly stick with Miller High Life or Pabst Blue Ribbon! I'm tired of people always saying "You're marketing it toward the kids!". How are they marketing it toward the kids? You have to be twenty-one to purchase alcohol in the United States. Sparks is an alcoholic beverage that is marked toward responsible adults, not "teenagers that want to drink alcohol because they like the taste of Red Bull".
There are also anti-tobacco groups that claim Camel Snus is marketed directly to teenagers who want to conceal their tobacco-use in High School. Really? That must be quite a niche market!

[capt_cope]

not SO niche on hiding tobacco in high school. I'd have jumped at that sort of product, and tried damned hard to come up with a hidden spitter for class. I was stupid and got myself addicted to dip at the ripe old age of 15, and I used to dip in the bathroom and locker room ALL the damn time. If I'd have known about snus then... I'd probably have done better in class, at the least I wouldn't have spent so much time figuring out inventive ways to spit in class (always ended up being either a nearly empty pepsi bottle, just full enough to hit the bottom of the label or a foam soda cup with a straw.)

[theillustriousHeather]

I've had the orange spark beverage.. and though it didn't make me forget how drunk I was.. it was definitely easy to drink a few of them because of their sweetness. I guess the caffeine did hide the tired feeling you sometimes get from being real dunk, but I wouldn't say you'd "forget" how drunk you were.
I don't understand the problem with mixing caffeine and alcohol, people have been doing this for years.. a la rum and cokes. There's a reason booze is mixed with sweet mixers.. they're easier to drink

[chainsnuser]

There's a reason booze is mixed with sweet mixers.. they're easier to drink

... not for me. I grew up with traditional booze (yeah, when I was young, nobody cared if a 10 year old schoolboy drank some alcohol once in half a year) and for me there's no reason at all to mix beer or rum with coke or coffee or what else. The bitterness of beer is refreshing for me, whiskey or vodka (etc.) are already sweet enough and wine is best, when dry or, so to say, sour. But I also don't have a problem with all the fancy mix-drinks of today (apart from the fact that it's not as easy anymore to find a bottle of normal beer in a shop, among all the new stuff).

The problem with the 'coma-drinking' youngsters, which are in the news every day, in Germany at least, is much less a problem of some fancy new drinks than of the 'demonization' of alcohol by the puritan freaks, who seem to take over the media, nowadays. This demonization makes alcohol all the more interesting for young people.

Cheers!

[Xobeloot]

This demonization makes alcohol all the more interesting for young people.

Someday people will learn that kids will do what kids will do... Kids will do it sooner, faster, and more of it if they are told not to.

[spirit72]

I don't understand the problem with mixing caffeine and alcohol, people have been doing this for years.. a la rum and cokes. There's a reason booze is mixed with sweet mixers.. they're easier to drink

I think the problem most of the states in question have with this stuff is that you get the jacked-up, heightened alertness that comes with a big caffeine dose, but with the same delayed reaction time/poor judgment/lessened inhibition that comes with alcohol use.

Mix all of that with younger drinkers who are, in the majority, notorious for questionable judgment(that was sure as hell the case for me!), and you have a potential disaster.

Plus, I've read a few stories about emergency room visits by kids who drank too much energy drink in the first place(caffeine overdose, dangerously rapid heartbeat, etc).

I read also that there are a couple of the energy drinks out right now in the U.S. that are exactly 1mg of caffeine away from requiring a warning label by law.

So while I'm absolutely not a fan of the nanny state, I think that the states who have gotten after Miller might actually have a point on this one.

[ponysoprano]

here's an article stating that Sparks red is officially on hold. I signed up so I could comment on this site's idiotic snus mis-information, and now I'm on their GD mailing list! This goes to show that whether you're for or against something, the power is in numbers, money and sometimes politics.

http://www.jointogether.org/news/hea...parks-red.html