Energy Drink Ban: The Beginning of the End?
If you’ve been keeping half an eye on the EF blog - I’ve often maintained that sooner or later - one of the “hardcore” energy drinks is going to wreck it for everyone else.
Simply put - someone wanders into a 7-11, walks out with a Spike Shooter or Redline, chugs it, and has some sort of bad reaction (palpitations, etc).
Kentucky legislators are looking at banning energy drink sales to minors (that’s anyone under 18).
[...] a student from Brodhead, Ky., inspired the bill when he related his experience with an energy drink for a contest called “It ought to be a law.”
“This young man bought an energy drink on the way to school one morning,” Ford said. “He had a situation that his heart started beating rapidly and he had a bad experience with it.”
We don’t know what the drink was - but presumably something with a fair whack of caffeine (either that or the said student had an extremely poor tolerance).
Kentucky lawmaker Danny Ford has placed a limit of 71mg caffeine per 12oz in his proposal. I guess that means no more Starbucks Latte’s (~ 77mg per 12 oz).
Actually, no, in order for the drink sale to be banned, it has to contain Taurine AND Glucoronolactone.
So that poor 7-11 clerk needs to memorize the ingredients list for every caffeinated beverage in store to make sure s/he doesn’t ban the wrong one.
“So I can have an energy drink that’s got 400mg of caffeine in it (which is a lot for you mehums out there…for me that’s…a couple of hours) but as long as it has no taurine, I can sell it to 11 year olds all day long.”
I can’t help wondering that if this proposal goes into law, there may be a follow-on into other states.
What we really need is to get some of the “hardcore” drinks out of the convenience stores and gas stations. Keep them available, but only through outlets that know exactly what they are dealing with, and aren’t going to sell a 6-pack of spike shooter to a pimply-faced 13 year old on his way to school.
71 mg caffeine is kinda low. That’s the same as two cans of Coca-cola, or 1 1/2 cans of Mountain Dew.
Maybe we should ban candy sales to kids as well. I’m sure there are more people with Type II Diabetes than with low caffeine tolerance.
25 Comments
I completely agree; it’s ridiculous. I just hope that it takes them awhile (like a year and a half or so) before it gets to Texas.
I was actually asked for ID once when I was just trying to buy a Full throttle Fury, that was also really stupid. I think it was because me being (at the time) 15 and (even still) rather short, the clerk thought I wouldn’t be able to handle it at whatever age he thought I was. I don’t know, that’s as well as I can guess, but it was still stupid- I had been buying the same drink for a year prior to that just a few blocks from my house. Now i’ve upgraded to Monster Heavy Metal (32 oz) and haven’t been hassled about it.
It’s stupid… they blame the drink instead of the kid. Last time I checked I never saw a can of Monster yelling at me to drink it… Although I have imagined it. 
I agree. If said guy had bad reaction to said drink then maybe he shouldn’t drink any more energy drinks. Just that simple.
Now I’m not at all implying that energy drinks and alcohol are equal or whatever but remember they tried to ban alcohol? Prohibition. Haha!
It’s all a load of crap.
Energy Drinks don’t hurt people, people hurt themselves when they try to drink too many energy drinks.
We must protect stupid people from themselves!! The same thing happened with ephedra. A handful of bad experiences/deaths and an almost instant ban was instated. BUT, something like tobacco, where the money is in the business and gov’t. can have thousands of ‘bad experiences’ a day with little more than what Ky is giving energy drinks.
That said, I agree some effort should be made to keep the high-test energy drinks from the kiddies. Last thing I want is my 11 yrold pounding back Redlines. It is MY responsibility to make sure she doesn’t, not the gov’t. But, hey, that’s just me. I could be wrong.
People go so far out of their way to get killed by me. If you want to die you can just ask me. No need to go through all this bullshit!
P.S. You can take my energy drink when you pry it from my cold dead hands!
This will probably lead to them taking glucoronolactone out of all the drinks because no one knows what it is.
You numbskulls wouldn’t need “energy” drinks if you would just get some f***ing sleep, and weene yourselves off the stimulant.
Cracks me up to see the addicts crash and burn at 2:00 and almost fall asleep at the wheel driving to 7-11 to get their fix.
Don’t you know your bodies will keep adapting and require more and more until companies will have to shovel caffiene into your drinks by the truck-load to get the same effect?
Wake up…”literally”.
[...] It was a good run energy drinks. I’m not surprised at all [...]
All that i have to say is watch how much u drink and how many days a week u drink it. I can say from experience that too much caffine is very bad for you. Just be moderate. dont drink a redline every lunch, cus if u need that strong a drink in the middle of the day then you should cut back. Save them for the all night LAN party or whatever you do to get the jitters without risking your heart and BP. stay safe, and watch how much u drink.
tr4ckba11, Would two energy drinks per day be a genuine risk to heart or blood pressure? That’s scary if true!
sence it cant be banned without consuming Taurine AND Glucoronolactone they find a way to make a energy drink withouyt those.
Here we go again. More laws to protect stupid people from their own stupidity, which wouldn’t be necessary if the stupid people were less stupid. Then the rest of us with more than half a brain suffer.
It’s all about moderation, self-regulated based on your personal tolerance levels. I’m just waiting for an accidental caffeine suicide to make the Darwin Awards and send the medical / caffinated community into an all-out, “Bawls to the wall” war.
banning energy drinks?
that is ridiculous. im drinkin’ red jak right now and im pretty sure im still alive and nothings happened. ive always drank them and always will. i mean you never know that certain guy couldve had something wrong with his heart or something it doesnt mean it was the drink.
they should not ban energy drinks anywhere!!!!!
This is the kind of stupidity that makes Starbucks put “Warning: This drink might be HOT” on their cups.
This is retarded. We had a teacher at my school who did a poll thing about this, trying for the same thing. I would grab a monster or a full throttle, sometimes a redbull before class almost everymorning. I didn’t really need it, but I wanted it. It never messed with me at all. If people weren’t so stupid, we wouldn’t be in danger of having our drinks banned…. Hell, I’m drinking one now. xD
Wow, energy drinks do have effects on some people that have reactions, but if you are one of them, why are you drinking them in the firsts place? Are you just trying to prove that you have a terrible and ugly reaction to caffeine. You must have learned that when u were 10 when you first tried coffee. God. Energy drinks hurt people that are unaware of their problems and or drink5 of them in one night.
WOW THE IDIOIC OF OUR counrty is growing i mean why shoudl every1 else suffer cause some dumb kid cant handle a redline i mean crap ive been a caffine drink sience i was 2 coffee every morning and a Redline about 3x a week it dont hurt me and im 5″5′ and weigh 125 i try to gain weight but my metablisim is like super high
i just read this a few min. ago from the bevnet thing…wow..this is honestly a load of bullshit and obviously hasn’t had a whole lot of thought behind it…Just the story in and of itself..a guy got an energy drink and had troubles…wtf, that means nothing. We don’t know if he had caffeine sensitivity or if he read the label on the can (assuming its a stronger one like spike) or if he had already had coffee or some other drink. At 16, I have been asked for my ID at gas stations a few times when trying to get something like an upshot (which is rediculous) but at a GNC, I can walk in and come out with a 4 pack of spike or redline…Granted, I probably know my tolerance better than most people my age, but anyone can read a label. The experience of this one person is insufficient to deprive minors of drinks… we’d still get them..it’d just be annoying, and I have a feeling that many of them (including myself) would just turn to pills..a few dollars at walmart for 90 pills, 200mg a whack, large revune losses for maufacturers and I save money…bad idea on their part.