“FDA does not find support for the claim that the addition of caffeine to these alcoholic beverages is ‘generally recognized as safe,’ which is the legal standard,” Joshua Sharfstein, principal deputy commissioner at the FDA, wrote in a press release. “To the contrary, there is evidence that the combinations of caffeine and alcohol in these products pose a public health concern.”Then there was the point that the FDA was pissed at the "high alcohol content" of the drinks, because, apparently, people are too stupid to read the labels on the cans.
But you can go into any bar and order a double-shot of Irish Coffee. Hell, you can drink six of them and, instead of passing out from the liquor, you'll be awake until 4 am.* "Generally recognized as safe"-- are they kidding me? How does alcohol pass that standard?
I guess the FDA had been able to get a good handle on salmonella-tainted meat and eggs, along with making sure that there is only a certain amount of rat shit in peanut butter.
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* I'm not going to say why I know this to be true.
The issue appeared to be similar to candy-flavored cigarettes -- i.e., the packaging and advertising were such as to be misleading about the safety of the beverages. If you go into a bar and order Irish coffee, there's no confusion about what you're getting. You're in a bar. You're getting whiskey in coffee. You know that if you drink three or four of them, you're going to be a wide awake drunk. But when you buy a can of what looks like some sort of energy drink but which actually has far more alcohol than that Irish coffee, well. How many people can take the alcohol content off the side of a large can of something and turn it into how many Irish coffee equivalents it is? I can do that math but that's because I'm a mathematician. Most people aren't. (Hint: One of these cans was approximately the same as four Irish coffees... and they were sold in six-packs!).
ReplyDeleteIf the vendors of these drinks didn't want their drinks to be banned, there's an easy way that they could have headed off the ban-hammer, and that's by being up-front on just what was in that can in terms that real humans can understand ("this can is the equivalent of four cans of beer and four cups of coffee"), not fine print on the back of the can. It's like those credit card agreements that are 20 pages of utter gibberish... can there really be a meeting of the minds if the person buying it can't possibly understand what he's buying?
- Badtux the Deceptive-advertising Penguin