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FDA Cracks Down on Caffeine-Charged Alcoholic Drinks
Alex Kingsbury
Four Loko announced that it was dropping caffeine from its alcoholic drinks
The human body has a barometer to tell the brain when it has consumed too much alcohol. After one too many, speech is slurred, the head aches, and the body becomes drowsy and gets wobbly on its feet.
But caffeine can mask those sensory clues that usually stop drinkers.
And now the
The federal crackdown follows several state-level efforts to limit the sale and marketing of the increasingly popular beverages, which government officials contend are marketed toward the young. In 2008, 13 state attorneys general began investigations into the drinks; and
The brewers, for their part, responded quickly to the expected move by the
But the ban will only impact a limited, if growing, sector of the spirits market. As the Four Loko makers noted in a recent statement, if the combination of alcohol and caffeine was unsafe, then "popular drinks like rum and colas or Irish coffees that have been consumed safely and responsibly for years would face the same scrutiny that our products have recently faced."
Critics of the drinks point to research that suggests that the culture of consumption of these particular drinks is particularly alarming from a public health perspective. For instance, a study by the
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FDA Cracks Down on Caffeine-Charged Alcoholic Drinks
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