I've watched a million of these little intrusions go by in the news, but I guess this one was the straw that broke the camel's back... time to start a thread.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/H...index.html

Who do these people think they are?

Outrageous! To think that they wont legalize MJ and then this? I'm shocked! Really...

What I don't understand, is that if its an alcoholic drink, why is the FDA involved? Should this be under the jurisprudence of the BATF?

And if the answer is "both".....then I think we have identified some government waste through duplication that we can eliminate.

This is an outrage! I want my drunk drivers awake and alert!

I'd say the FDA seriously needs to be reigned in. Or dissolved.

http://www.washingtonpost...05049.html

This is an outrage! I want my drunk drivers awake and alert! And with hypertension!

Bob the Second appears to be sufficiently outraged.

Rick the Chickenhawk seems to have steered a reasonable thread that he started down towards the precipitous path towards Beckian foolish outrage.

Must be time for me to go watch some South Park.

By dissolved Im not saying there's nothing the FDA does that's worth doing. But when you find a bureacracy that seems to enjoy overstepping its bounds, a stern letter of reprimand doesn't cut it. Sometimes you have to start over.

Of course, the military never oversteps its authority and doesn't have any duplication of services.

Using Rickenhawk logic, I guess we should dissolve the military. Or at least start over.

I don't think that they should be banned, but those drinks do seem like they're tailor made for frat boys to kill themselves with. Something like 6 light beers worth of alcohol and a ton of caffeine per can. They say the caffeine masks the effects of the alcohol for a while so you have time to chug 3 of them before you know you're drunk and then you're unconscious.

As someone who's been buzzed on Jag Bombs once or twice (don't ask), I can tell you it's an awful feeling.

they're tailor made for frat boys to kill themselves with

Isn't science wonderful?

So you are all for selling an alcohol drink, caffeinated to let one drink more before passing out to encourage brain damage or death and sweetened to be more palatable for underaged drinkers. So where do you draw the line at government interference? How many people need to die before its ok to make a regulation? Almost all regulations have a history of death and suffering behind their creation and it might be handy to have a number of deaths to know when to become concerned.

If you banned everything that causes a few deaths there wouldn't be much left.

Thats my question, how many is too much?

Steve...you're right, but it goes the other way too. Regulations need to have some stopping point.

How many people have to fall down stairs and break their neck before we outlaw two story dwellings or require elevators to be installed?

Shouldn't we outlaw garden hoses? People have drowned in baby pools filled with them, or tripped over them and hurt themselves.


Sure, those examples are extreme, but are there to make a point, where DO you draw the line?

So you are all for selling an alcohol drink, caffeinated to let one drink more before passing out to encourage brain damage or death and sweetened to be more palatable for underaged drinkers.

What's to prevent kids (aside from the taste) from drinking a Red Bull spiked with vodka? What about everclear and other alcohols that are so strong you can drink way more than you should before realizing it? Do we outlaw strawberry daiquiris or wine coolers? Regulate the stuff as alcohol in the same way all alcohol is regulated.

From what I've heard, if bad taste is an obstacle you won't be drinking 4-loko either.

"So you are all for selling an alcohol drink, caffeinated to let one drink more before passing out to encourage brain damage or death and sweetened to be more palatable for underaged drinkers."

I'd like some bacon flavor in mine.

I am not for all Government regulations, my point on this is If a company makes a product, flavored and formulated to appeal to an illegal market group and markets it to that group, they are standing on the shaky moral ground. Think of using these companies justification as if talking about a drug cartel. I know, I know, it is not the same thing but putting their heads in the sand and claiming they didn't know who or how it would be used is not an excuse.

How exactly do you flavor something to appeal to an illegal market?

Who would make that determination?

Hell, Just tax it to death.

Ok, wine is acidic, beer has a bitterness from hops, distilled alcohol has a strong burn, it make alcohol flavored for under age drinkers you use beer style fermented alcohol as a base then sweeten the hops bitter bite out of it, finish by adding the flavors of the energy drinks young kids life on. Yes, drinks can be mixed with this for younger flavor profile but then the person mixing it is legally responsible ( contributing to the delinquency of a minor) if they hand that drink to an under age person. I just feel these corporations need to be held to some level of responsibility for cranking them out by the millions. The problem with corporations is no one person is responsible for their actions, it can not be thrown into jail, just fined. As long as it makes more money then the fine, the fine is just a tax and pushes corporations towards making irresponsible decisions. Lets not forget that the executives who caused this latest economic melt down, most of whom kept their jobs and all of them got giant bonuses as rewards for putting hundreds of thousands of people out of work. Every government regulation needs strong consideration before it is passed and there should probably be a review system to consider if it is still needed every 10 years or so but saying all regulation is bad is plunging us back to the days of the Triangle Shirt Works fire and children dying in mines and factories.

It's amazing, but somehow the accountability always falls on everyone but the person taking the drink.

These drinks didn't start underage drinking, or even increase it. They made news here and there because they happened to be the drink of choice the night some kids went too far. The caffeine content in these 24-oz cans is far less than one 8-oz cup of Starbucks. It's nothing.

There is no reason or science to back up what your government is taking away. Only relentless dogoody-feelgoodism. The same disease that's made the Happy Meal illegal in SF. The kind that will slowly but surely take away more and more of the everyday freedoms we have.

Yet I still don't see much of anything our government goes after that has a body count quite like this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w...S._by_year

I can't really figure out why... whether it's progressive romanticism for the Motorcycle Diaries, or great fuel economy.

But then again I heard somewhere once that there was no acceptable exchange rate of blood-to-oil, so I know it can't be good fuel mileage.

We are talking about Under aged people here, by definition Not old enough or experienced enough to make these dissections themselves. I suppose we could avoid these regulations by just holding the parents completely responsible for their children's actions. There are legal consequences for the under age drinker now but remember this is an age group that has trouble thinking ahead and planning next next weekend.

Indeed. They are UNDERAGE. We already have laws in place concerning underage drinking. That should suffice.

BTW Rick; its YOUR government too. Unless you are leaving... to Canada?