Dear Four Loko
People would definitely pass on Four Loko if it made you look like that...
via The Chicago Tribune:
Four Loko, the high-octane alcoholic beverage favored on college campuses, is again under fire.
Michigan announced Thursday that it is banning alcoholic caffeinated drinks like Four Loko, which is produced by Chicago-based Phusion Projects and has been singled out for criticism by health experts. A day earlier, members of Chicago's City Council proposed their own ban on energy drinks that contain alcohol.
The Michigan action, passed by the state's Liquor Control Commission on a 2-1 vote, identified 55 products for its ban. The commission's decision followed recent reports of students in Washington and New Jersey being hospitalized after drinking Four Loko. Manufacturers will have 30 days to pull the banned products.
If there's one thing I've learned during college it's that drinking should be its own department, with its own courses, and degree. The amount of alcohol consumed on any given college campus weekly could flood a stadium, drowning sorrows and a plethora of aspirations and memories with it. That said, the main barrier for most college kids and their desired inebriation is that stingy age requirement. Kids have been finding ways to acquire alcohol for generations, whether it be fake ID, older friends helping them, bootlegging or dipping into their parents' stashes. Until this past year, that was it. Now we've got you, Four Loko, with your fruity, wine cooler-esque flavors, your unusually high alcohol levels and your abnormally low price.
Four Loko, you burst onto the scene before the summer, with most people mistaking you for cans of their favorite iced tea. Now, months later, college campuses and parent groups are calling for your head due to the overwhelming amount of kids winding up in the hospital or dead after knocking back a few too many of you. That said, you shouldn't be blamed for their demise, even though you were in their hands. There are a few reasons why I believe you ARE NOT guilty, and why people should check their habits before they blame you for anything:
1) Drinking alcohol is COMPLETELY voluntary. People use peer pressure as a scapegoat for everything, yet when it comes down to it, no one is drinking you with a gun pointed at them. No one is being forced to down 23.5 ounces of your blackout-inducing elixer. At the end of the day, a person who deems himself responsible and old enough to drink one of you should have to deal with your consequences. In the same way as drinking you is voluntary, so are the headaches, nausea, memory loss and health benefits that come with you.
2) You taste DISGUSTING. Yes, I have tried you, and no I will never put my lips to a can of you again (Gin and tonics are my drink of choice anyway). It's funny that nature's way of telling you not to ingest something is by having it taste like the broad side of an outhouse. You would think that young adults could master that idea. But no. They continue to guzzle you, unaware of the damage they are doing to their livers, but all the more inebriated.
3) You keep people awake. The silver lining for most drinkers is that after a night of pounding back Jager Bombs or guzzling from the tap, they can take solace in the fact that alcohol is a depressant. They will undoubtedly fall out either due to fatigue or because of the alcohol in their system. Not with you, Four Loko. You make it so that no matter how much one drinks, they will never fall asleep. Your inhuman levels of caffeine, combined with the alcohol, makes one all the more drunk but no more tired. That leads to to the inevitable: blackout drunkenness.
Four Loko, those are three things that people should know about you before drinking, but don't for some reason. It's a sad day and age where people are unable to control their urges to drink, so much so that they endanger their lives. It's even sadder when people can't fess up to there being a problem with their own habits, rather than blaming everything on the inception of a product to the market. Yes, you are the next of kin to poison, Four Loko. Yes, drinking you probably takes 8 hours off one's life. But at the same time, shouldn't people know that before they pop the top? The balance between personal and external responsibility is something that is being lost every day, with your effigy at the forefront. Sadly, that balance will never be righted as long as you're on the streets...