You might’ve heard Four Loko (aka liquid cocaine) is coming off the shelf. The alcoholic energy drink is like the bastard child of an orgy involving a Steel Reserve and about four Red Bulls hopped up on Crystal Lite. With eleven percent alcohol  and enough sugar and caffeine to fuel Justin Bieber’s 12th birthday, you knew it was only a matter of time before the Loko was thrown in the Looney Bin.  The Washington State Liquor Control Board agrees. They voted yesterday to impose a 120-day ban on alcoholic energy drinks. Governor Chis Gregoire and Washington State attorney general Rob McKenna both praised the vote, the guvnah saying, "By taking these drinks off the shelves we are saying ‘no’ to irresponsible drinking." Then this gem came in from the Spokesman and KREM-TV:

Just hours after Gov. Chris Gregoire announced a state ban on alcoholic energy drinks the Hamilton Market near Gonzaga University in Spokane sold 30 cases of Four Loko.

KREM reports some college students are stocking up before the ban takes effect next Thursday.

Gregoire said Wednesday that the caffeine-and-alcohol combination encourages excessive drinking and the fruit-flavored drinks in brightly colored cans are aimed at the young.
Nine Central Washington University students who drank Four Loko were hospitalized after a party.

The emergency rule ban is a reaction to that particular incident at CWU and a way to work on policy for a permanent ban but is that the right thing to do? Do “just say no” and prohibition work?

The Stranger argues otherwise because, as long as you’re not hurting someone else, they say, the government shouldn't dictate what adults can or can't put in thier own bodies. If you want caffeine and rum and soda and cake blended into a smoothie, that's your call. It's gross, but it's your business. Even more, prohibition never works and never has. People will combine caffeine and taurine and alcohol as long as they can pour a Red Bull into a vodka. A ban may reduce the number of people who do that by drinking pre-made energy drinks, true, but the goal isn't to stop people from combining those legal drugs.

The goal is to reduce the number of people getting sick from combining the drugs.
In these perilous waters of mitigating harm of unhealthy vices, Washington State has successfully employed a restriction of sale (age, place, time), regulation (various levels of government oversight or authority), informative packaging (labels on booze and smokes), and public-health information (like the immensely successful anti-smoking campaigns). This reduces the harm of those drugs and increases information about those drugs. But prohibition relinquishes government control of all those public-health influences. We're not "saying ‘no’ to irresponsible drinking," governor, we're losing a chance to influence the way certain products are sold and packaged.

We should do the same thing to energy drinks we do to other vice products: Require them to have GIANT WARNING LABELS, prevent marketing that's obviously aimed at young teenagers, mandate that they be sold in limited locations (maybe only liquor stores or stores that sell most of their products as food?), insist that advertising contain messages about responsibility, and impose a tax for a fund that educates people about their risks. That way people can make better-informed decisions about energy drinks (including mixing vodka with Red Bull).

But we shouldn't let the governor and attorney general become enthralled by The Next Big Scare and create some sweeping ban—with an assist from a captivated media and a puritanical lynch mob watching TV.
 

---

---