What could be worse behind the wheel than a drunk driver? How about a drunk driver also on caffeine? The drink in question is called Four Loko and if you haven’t heard of it, likely your college student or teen acquaintances have. It’s one of a handful of drinks aimed at mixing two types of highs at once.
Four Loko has an alcohol content of 12 percent. Consider that a beer has half or one-third of that. The 23.5 ounce colorful can also has a load of sugar. Similar drinks go by the name of Liquid Charge, Rockstar 21, and Torque.
In Florida, the drink made headlines recently when a 20-year-old driver was found to have mixed Four Loko with liquor and marijuana before driving through a red light in St. Petersburg, killing a family of four.
Popular Among the Young
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) believes about 26 percent of college students have consumed these high-alcohol, high-caffeine drinks and it is considering a ban.
Last November, the FDA sent letters to 27 manufacturers asking for some explanation as to why the drinks should not be banned. While caffeine alone is considered safe and alcohol is lawful under certain circumstances, mixing alcohol and caffeine together in a product for sale is not legal unless it receives FDA approval.
So far, 19 of the drink makers have responded to the FDA. They may have an argument in that caffeine is added to some soft drinks in low concentrations of less than 200 parts per million.
Four Loko is made by Drink Four Brewing Company of Milwaukee and distributed by Phusion Projects. The company does not disclose the caffeine count, but similar energy drinks such as Monster contain 160 mg of caffeine, Amp contains 143 mg, Xenergy has 200 mg.
An eight ounce cup of coffee contains about 100 mg of caffeine.
Congress is involved as well and wants to know how the caffeinated alcohol drinks can be marketed in a way similar to energy drinks, with colorful large cans and on social media sites to customers who are under the drinking age of 21.
A company spokesman tells TBO.com that they work hard to make sure the product is sold to adults over the age of 21.
Fearing product liability lawsuits, Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors stopped producing caffeinated alcohol drinks after attorney generals in several states accused them of marketing to underage drinkers. Smaller companies have since filled the niche.
