Alcohol Mixed Energy Drinks

Energy drinks have taken off over the last decade, as has the practice of mixing energy drinks with alcohol. The consumption of alcohol mixed energy drinks, referred to as AmED, has become so common among teens and young adults that in November 2010, the FDA issued warnings to several major AmED manufacturers, informing them that their products were a "public health concern" and should either be reformulated or taken off the shelves. These drinks are more dangerous that other alcoholic beverages because they mix various stimulants with alcohol, masking the effects of the alcohol and leading the binge drinking. There is also concern that these drinks are being marketed specifically to young people and teenagers.The most notorious of these drinks, Four Loko, comes in a brightly colored aluminum can in a variety of different flavors. Four Loko is one of the few drinks to survive the onslaught FDA complaints and parent lawsuits by changing it's formula to remove the stimulants caffeine, taurine, and guarana from it's ingredients. A recent lawsuit by the Federal Trade Commission claimed that the company who manufactures Four Loko, Phusion Projects, LLC, made false statements about the alcohol content and the safe consumption of their beverage. As a result, Phusion Projects is required to include an "Alcohol Facts panel" on all of their products starting May 12, 2013.

An article in the December 2011 edition of the academic journal "Addictive Behaviors" titled "Drinking patterns and risk behaviors associated with combined alcohol and energy drink consumption in college drinkers" sought to establish a relationship between drinking AmEDs and other risky behaviors. A group of 465 students from a Western Canadian university participated in the survey. The study found that about one is every four participants had consumed an AmED within the past 30 days. It concluded that more the frequent AmED drinkers were twice as likely to experience negative effects of drinking than their non-AmED drinking counterparts. In my opinion, this study is flawed in that it included students who did not drink at all in the survey results. This makes the effects of AmEDs appear far worse by not accounting for other factors. It attributed the increased risk of negative drinking effects to those that drink AmEDs to be caused by the drinking of AmEDs, ignoring the notion that correlation does not cause causation and that other factors may be involved, such as those who consume AmEDs are by nature more inclined to risky behavior. It tries to account for the participant's risk taking inertia through a number of survey questions including: "Have you ever gone scuba diving?" and "Would you like to pilot your own airplane?" I feel that the questions asked by the survey to determine a participants inclination for risk can be attributed to other variable, including family income and class.