The Moral Panic Continues
The Food and Drug Administration will rule that caffeine is an unsafe substance to add to alcoholic beverages, “effectively making products such as Four Loko, Joose, and others like them, prohibited for sale in the United States,” according to Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.). In addition, the Federal Trade Commission plans to notify companies making the product that “they are engaged in the potential illegal marketing of unsafe alcoholic drinks,” Schumer said in a statement.
“Let these rulings serve as a warning to anyone who tried to peddle dangerous and toxic brews to our children. Do it and we will shut you down,” Schumer said. “This ruling should be the nail in the coffin of these dangerous and toxic drinks. Parents should be able to rest a little easier knowing that soon their children won’t have access to this deadly brew.”
Irish coffee? Rum & Coke? Jagerbombs? Get ’em while you still can, I guess.
I don’t think it is moral panic so much as the liberal mommy statism. Mommy always knows best for her children just like SF and their Happy Meal ban.Report
I’m inclined to stay with the moral panic angle. I find the invocation of “our children” particularly revealing. Here, I’d thought alcohol was only sold to adults 21 and over, and charges to the contrary clearly aren’t what this issue is about.
Either a 21-year-old is an adult, or he’s a child. The answer can’t be whatever suits your side in the debate of the moment.Report
@Jason Kaznicki: Well, the way this is going anyone under 30 is still a child, apparently. We’ll have to create a new class of citizens for young adults besides just ‘adults’ and ‘minors’… Yadults? Y’Dolts? Any ideas on a name?
@Scott: Thankfully Gavin Newsom vetoed that ban, but he’s running off to the Lt. Governor’s office at the end of the year…Report
All I can say is I’m glad that this moral panic isn’t going to ruin as many lives as the secret satanic abuse/cult one did.
Damning with faint praise and all that.Report
It’s a liberal who’s morally panicking.Report
Unfortunatly substance warriorism is a bipartisan affair, otherwise it’d be easier to get rid of.Report
Really North? What goofball in the GOP other than those that should be commie-Dems, would support this nonsense….this is pure, unadulterated commie-Demism!
Hey, did you see all our new friends..they’re funny!Report
The, um, commie-Dems are certainly guilty of a lot of this nonsense, but let’s remember who created the position of drug czar for which conservative stalwart. The Tea Party crowd will get my sympathy when I see them take the criminalization of half the citizenry by way of the drug war as seriously as they do far more innocuous instances of statism.Report
The Tea Party crowd will get my sympathy when I see them take the criminalization of half the citizenry by way of the drug war as seriously as they do far more innocuous instances of statism.
Is there any crowd that takes the drug war seriously? Let alone as seriously as the stuff they call “Commie-demism/Fascism” that the other side dismisses as “innocuous instances of statism”?
(I know the libertines do, but they’re irrelevant.)Report
There’s a distributed faction of people who would jump at the chance to end the drug war but of course we’ve been marginalized by both major parties due to a variety of dynamics. Now that the landscape is changing due to the internet, it’s only a matter of time before someone takes the lead in uniting these people into a single entity that will work outside of the system to change the system itself. The alternative is to depend on the American people to tackle the issue in some manner consistent with what it claims to believe about individual liberty.Report
Massive, nonviolent civil disobedience, perhaps?Report
We should talk.Report
When you need funds make a post.Report
I’ve actually been meaning to make a post about Project PM in general, which is designed to tackle a great number of issues at once by way of a sort of heuristic. We don’t really need funds, but could always use more participants.Report
No one is taking the lead. But, marijauna is practically legal as it is — it’s hard to believe we can’t take one more little step. I’ve got land I need to put to use.Report
I was going to say that the lefty moral panic over Four Loko is nothing compared to the fascist Republican[1] moral panic over gay homosexuals.
[1] Confidential to R.C.: Turnabout is fair play, isn’t it? Your commie-Dem schtick really wears after a while.Report
J.K. …me, annoying? If this keeps up I may subscribe and/or contribute to Cato! Did you have anyone in mind when you wrote “fascist Republican?”Report
I had absolutely no one in mind. I just find your nicknames for Democrats unhelpful.Report
In the spirit of concilliation, in which I am well known, I could return to “librul-Dem?” Does that work?Report
I’ve always thought Dhimmicrat to be relatively clever, even if it is entirely insane in light of the Bush/House of Saud alliance.Report
From a conservative? yes that worksso well , I must say I’m looking forward to America’s version of the spending review, not to mention the strategic defence review.Report
Actually, your “fascist-Republicans” makes a decent point, though not the conscious recognition that “commie-Dem” does e.g. most folks understand that to be a registered Democrat one must have a decided statist inclination.
If your really experiencing angst I can go to “C-Dem,” if that’ll hep.Report
I was just saying that Schumer is a panicking liberal, trying to combine the charges.Report
The Democrats do seem to be much worse on these sorts of nannying issues when it comes to food and drink, no question about it.Report
I rather like Jonathan Haidt’s take on this in his TED talk. In short, he claims that “purity” is a universal moral value. The primary difference between (social) conservatives and (eco) liberals is that the former focus on sexuality while the latter focus on food.Report
“Parents should be able to rest a little easier knowing that soon their children won’t have access to this deadly brew.”
That Chuck Schumer! Such a card!Report
So when will you be reinstating the 18th ammendment?Report
League Public Service Announcement –
There is now a “Four Lokator Map” that tracks legislation banning or restricting Four Loko:
http://fourlokostories.com/lokator
Anyone who has used the accompanying site to post his or her Four Loko story is encouraged to reproduce them here, at no extra charge.Report
I notice that Oklahoma and Utah, bastions of lefty liberalism, have banned the stuff.Report
As did Romneyite state Michigan. What was the fourth state? Maybe there’s a Mormon connection to that one too.
Mormons are the Scientologists of politics.Report
> Mormons are the Scientologists of politics.
Kabam! Two points.Report
I dated a Mormon girl in High School and she took me to a Church costume party one Halloween. I kept joking that I was going to dress as a cup of coffee to scare the Mormons.Report
I’ve never entirely understood the undergrad fad for combining vodka and Red Bull, but what’s funniest about this law is that people have been mixing stuff like that, on their own, for years- and long before Four Loko- and will continue to do so without problem. It’s not like they’re making one substance illegal; they’re saying that two substances are perfectly legal until you mix them together- although, actually, that’s legal too, provided you don’t sell it. So, I suppose you could just ask for the bartender to give you a rum and a coke and please look away.Report
Well, if I’m prohibited from ordering a non-decaf Irish coffee in a freezing cold poker room in Atlantic City, I just want to announce in advance that there will be blood.Report
It’s actually not a fad; I lived in Dar es Salaam back in 98 when there were more Americans than usual in the area due to the embassy attack and vodka and Red Bulls were the big thing at the ex-pat bars. Among the few things I remember about that period was that everyone was pissed off about the Red Bull shipping containers being stuck on the docks due to “fees.”Report
Okay, well then I support any legal means to prevent people from drinking that swill. And I’d like a law requiring all men over the age of 35 to retun to smoking pipe tobacco.Report
….or cigars?Report
I was reading an essay by C.S. Lewis and he mentioned something about “young men and their cigarettes” in contrast to the serious adults who smoked their pipes.
The past is another country.
And now I’m thinking about cigarettes again.Report
When I was too young to smoke and still smoked, we found it much easier to have a friend buy a big bag of pipe tobacco than regular packs of cigarettes. I have several pictures of my 16 year old self doing a J.R. “Bob” Dobbs impression with a pipe.Report