On November 17th 2010 the Food and Drug Administration of the United States warned four small companies that their caffeinated alcoholic drinks – namely Four Loko – were not “generally recognized as safe” and therefore subject to federal seizure if they failed to stop manufacturing them. The banning of Four Loko and similar beverages was the result of a crescendo-like moral panic that accompanied the product since its creation in August 2008 by Phusion Projects, a small company started by three entrepreneurs from Ohio State University. The government’s reasoning for the ban was that its formula – a mix of caffeine, taurine, guarana, and alcohol – posed a risk for public health and thus, was unfit for public consumption. The real reasons for the ban, however, go much further than just concern for public health, it stems from Neo-Prohibition; a movement that has been active since the 1980’s. Many aspects of this movement contributed to the banning of Four Loko, chief among them a moral panic propagated by sensationalist media, youth discrimination, cultural elitism and lastly a public policy theory called the Precautionary Principle which calls for preemptive government action to stop hypothetical threats. Moreover, Four Loko’s banning bears a striking resemblance to another victim of unfounded and irrational moral panic, absinthe. Given these circumstances, Four Loko was hastily and unjustifiably banned and represents an abuse of the government’s regulatory power.
The Media: Outlet of Moral Panic
In terms of political socialization, the media have perhaps the greatest influence aside from that of an individual’s parents. Television, internet sites, and even newspapers remain highly influential when it comes to agenda setting, that being the issues the media choose to report, thus making them politically relevant to both politicians and their constituents. By setting an agenda, the media state what the public should be concerned with – and with the advent of advocacy journalism – even suggest possible answers to the issues they highlight. With the agenda set and the political discourse of ubiquitous punditry, many citizens start making demands, meaning the policies they would like the government to enact. This function is so powerful that the media as a fourth branch of government has become a truism.
Concerning the coverage of Four Loko, the media did not deviate from their normal practices. The media highlighted an issue, Four Loko, but instead of offering neutral coverage – or at least showing multiple arguments for and against the banning – the media uniformly portrayed Four Loko as negatively as possible. Nearly every mainstream media outlet, from cable news to newspapers to Internet sites, ran extensive negative stories about Four Loko. The media’s reporting of Four Loko resulted in little more than hysterical moral panic. Let’s take a look at some examples. The local Fox news station in Dallas-Fort Worth ran and advertized a story entitled “Four Loko Causes Fatal Accident.” Similarly the The Saint Petersburg Times printed an article headlined as “Four Loko Found at Scene of Accident.” There are countless other examples of negative media reportage of Four Loko – some calling Four Loko “blackout in a can” and “liquid cocaine” – but let’s just focus on these two stories for now. The two stories singled out Four Loko specifically in the reports which is alarming because reports of car accidents rarely ever state more than the accident occurred. The media typically report that the accident was a result of drunk driving if the driver was intoxicated at the time. These are within the confines of responsible, impartial reporting. Until Four Loko, the media never specified what type of alcohol the driver consumed because it was not relevant to the fact that the driver was intoxicated. You would never see a headline that reads, “Busch Light Causes Fatal Car Accident” because whether the driver drank Busch Light or plum schnapps is irrelevant, unless the media have an agenda.
No media are inherently unbiased but the reporting of Four Loko became so negative that it could not be taken seriously. Even the casual news media observer notices the general uniformity of reporting, that is to say, media outlets report the same stories in tandem, Four Loko included. On any given day, the news media will report the same stories as other media outlets, with the only difference being the pundits – who themselves are marketed – giving their own takes on the issues. This uniformity can be attributed to the growing and unsettling trend of media conglomeration by large corporations. Thirty years ago, as many as fifty companies controlled the media in the United States. As of 2004, however, most of the smaller media companies have been bought by five media corporations who now own the majority of television and print media. Media conglomeration has many serious consequences, one of them being that moral panics are far more likely to occur. In the United States, government, special interest groups, and media form a sort of iron triangle by which they are all in close communication, transmitting ideas about public policy issues. What we have seen with the banning of Four Loko is communication between politicians eager to ban substances they do not like, Neo-Prohibitionist special interest groups like M.A.D.D and media. This creates a sort of public policy vacuum where diverse, substantial opinions are not discussed, rather, only those of the politically powerful are heard. Because the media options are so limited due to conglomeration, no mainstream outlets exist for true debate, instead, we see highly focused stories like Four Loko repeating themselves over and over again until the public is convinced – via moral panic – that a crisis exists. This phenomenon presents a disconcerting situation because it allows public policy to be swayed by the irrationality of moral panic. With the handful of media outlets all competing for the highest ratings, they report stories that are sensationalistic in order to shock the public into paying attention. Once one outlet gets hold of a sensationalist story, the others soon follow and moral panic ensues. The public, now convinced of a crisis, reacts by putting demands on government, in our case, banning Four Loko. This is highly problematic because a coercive institution as powerful as government should base public policy – in this case the ability to control the marketplace – on reason and rule of law instead of moral panic. The Four Loko debacle illustrates the power of media and its often-negative effects that are corrosive to a free society.
Demonizing Youths
Another inescapable aspect of the banning of Four Loko is that it was presented as a way to “protect” American youths. During the Four Loko debate, government agencies, officials, and politicians all sounded off about the dangers that mixing caffeine and alcohol posed to American youths, “youths” generally meaning university-aged Americans. As we have already seen, the media then picked up on the government’s rhetoric and ran sensationalist stories about the supposed existential threat caffeinated alcoholic beverages posed to American youth. Let’s take a look at some of the government’s rhetoric. Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York says, “Adding alcohol to energy drinks sends exactly the wrong message about responsible drinking, most especially to young.” George Hacker, a spokesman man for the pro-regulatory special interest group The Center for Science in Public Interest, says, “Mix alcohol and stimulants with a young person’s sense of invincibility and you have a recipe for disaster. The Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan: “I continue to be very concerned that these drinks are extremely dangerous, especially in the hands of young people.” Senator Chuck Schumer: “It is my understanding that caffeine-infused, flavored malt beverages are becoming increasingly popular among teenagers. The style and promotion of these products is extremely troublesome… [they are] designed to appear hip with flashy colors and funky designs that could appeal to younger consumers… caffeine and alcohol are a dangerous mix, especially for young people.” University of Florida toxicologist Bruce Goldberger: “It’s a very bad combination having alcohol, plus caffeine, plus the brain of a young person. It’s like a perfect storm.
Keep in mind that these are merely a handful of examples. Furthermore, what they show is an inherent bias against youths which is at the core of the government’s ban of Four Loko. Many of these officials assume the worst and apply it to an entire population. Take Mr. Hacker’s quote. He broadly paints an entire demographic – young people – as having “a sense of invincibility”. He then calls for legislation to ban Four Loko based on this caricature of young people, which is troubling because law should be based on equal protection and not hyperbole. Do some young adults have a sense of invincibility? Certainly. But to apply this thinking to an entire population is misguided and completely unfounded. Surely there are septuagenarians who have a sense of invincibility just as there are twelve year olds who are just as responsible as adults. The point is that legislation should not be made from assumptions, but rather, based on certainty. Until the government can prove that all American youths have a sense of invincibility, legislation should not be based on it.
Governmental rhetoric concerning alcohol and youths should be called what it is: age discrimination. Statements – like Goldberg’s about youth’s brains – are blanketed and discriminatory. If someone were to say, “ethnic group X cannot use product Y because their brains are inept” that person would rightfully be called a racist. The difference is that is that age discrimination has become institutionalized, meaning it is now part of government policy. Neo-Prohibitionists want alcohol to be heavily regulated and to do that they must demonize youths. They must paint youths in the worst light possible, no matter how inaccurate, so that their depiction becomes the normalized view. Therefore, everything that group consumes (i.e. Four Loko) can be painted in this negative light as well, and therefore, regulated. That is how Neo-Prohibitionists institutionalized youth discrimination. Regarding this discrimination, Neo-Prohibitionists would counter with research saying that the brain does not fully develop until the mid twenties, so youths should not be allowed to drink alcohol until they are older, which is twenty-one in the United States. The National Minimum Drinking Age Act – ironically passed in 1984 – accomplished this task by institutionalizing youth discrimination on the federal level. By effectively raising the drinking age to twenty-one, the federal government legitimized the Neo-Prohibitionist movement by agreeing that adults under twenty-one are not responsible enough to consume alcohol. In the United States, when an individual turns eighteen he or she is legally an adult and guaranteed equal protection under the law, according to the Fourteenth Amendment. That means he or she has the same rights as every other American. The National Minimum Drinking Age Act effectively created a class of Americans adults that do not have the same equality under the law: Americans from eighteen to twenty. So now we move back to the question of brain development which, Neo-Prohibitionists say, give them the right to ban Four Loko. While the brain might not develop fully until twenty-five, equal protection per the Fourteenth Amendment says a eighteen year old has the same rights as any other American, meaning they can consume anything that every other American can consume. If the government wants to pass laws forbidding the consumption of something based on age, than the government must raise the age of majority to that age. For example, if the government sets the drinking age at twenty-one, then it must increase the age of adulthood to twenty-one as well along with all the rights and privileges attached to the age of majority. That is the only way equal protection of the law can work. Either a group has all the rights and privileges as citizens, or they have none of them; the government cannot pick and choose which rights they want certain adults to have. The Neo-Prohibition movement, however, is not concerned with equal protection under the law; its only goal is to regulate alcohol consumption as much as possible.
Cultural Elitism
Café Amore, Irish Coffee, Irish Winters, Irish Ice, Mad Monks, Orient Express, Aman Snow Leopards, Espresso Martinis, Vienna Soothers, After Fives, Aggravation, Aspenlicious, B-52s, Babel on the Rocks, Bahama Mommas, Black Russians, White Russians, Black Sombreros, Brave Bulls, British Invasions, Dirty Mothers, Halfpipes, Mudslides, Sneaky Petes, Velvet Hammers, Jäger Bombs, and Widow Makers. These are just a mere twenty-seven examples of the hundreds of popular caffeinated cocktails. And unlike the caffeinated alcoholic drink Four Loko, these drinks are perfectly legal for public consumption. If the government banned Four Loko because the combination of caffeine and alcohol was not “generally regarded as safe” then why are these drinks still legal to sell? The difference between these caffeinated cocktails and Four Loko is that these drinks are expensive and more sophisticated, and therefore afforded by wealthier consumers. Four Loko is not sophisticated. It is cheap, equivalently alcoholic per serving, and marketed to poor university students. One of these cocktails, the Aman Snow Leopard, is described by critic Colleen Graham as “one fancy cocktail… the sweetness of Sagatiba Cachaca and amaretto, topped with luscious cream and a few drops of rosewater to offset the heavy sweet, then some creative decoration with a little espresso.” Four Loko comes in flavors like blue raspberry, lemon lime, cranberry lemonade, and fruit punch. What we see here is a double standard where aristocratic cocktails that offer the same buzzed rush as Four Loko due to their perceived exclusivity. By not commenting on this posh mix of caffeine and alcohol, policymakers imply that cocktail drinkers are responsible enough to consume both caffeine and alcohol. One can all too easily picture Chuck Schumer sipping caffeinated Camparis at a Congressional Cocktail. But poor college students? They are too irresponsible. Perhaps it is needless to say, but this paternalistic double standard has no place in public policy, especially in a country that claims in its founding document “all men are created equal” and where the equality and fairness are ideas promoted by both the two parties and the media.
The Precautionary Principle
In the past, politicians enacted public policy that was based on clear scientific data concerning the legislation involved. Lead-based paints were banned after they were proven to be harmful if congested. Pesticides were largely banned after Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring revealed them to be detrimental to the environment. And in 2004 prescription drug Vioxx was pulled of the market after studies had shown that it caused cardiovascular damage. All of these bans have something in common: they were supported by scientific consensuses showing their health concerns. Caffeinated alcoholic beverages apparently do not require the same level of scientific consensus. But why do these beverages deserve special treatment? What makes them so dangerous?
Four Loko and similar caffeinated alcoholic beverages partly owe their banning to a relatively new policymaking phenomenon called the Precautionary Principle. The Precautionary Principle has been implemented for mostly environmental and counter-terror policy but it can also be applied to Neo-Prohibitionist government actions like the banning of Four Loko. It states that, “When an activity raises threats of harm to the environment or human health, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.” In essence, if a hypothetical threat presents itself, say with Four Loko, the government is right to take a preliminary action, like banning Four Loko, even when scientists or policymakers do not fully understand the supposed threat.
The Precautionary Principle reared its ugly head during the presidency of George W. Bush and Tony Blair’s tenure as Prime Minister. It was during their leadership that the Precautionary Principle transformed itself from a legitimate environmental policy to a foreign policy based on hypothetical threats. The hypothetical threat of worldwide terrorist webs hinged on destroying the West served as the justification for Bush’s and Blair’s policies that saw preemptive action in the form of preventive war as the answer. Regarding his policy President Bush said, “America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” Tony Blair said, “Not a conventional fear about a conventional threat, but the fear that one day that these new threats of weapons of mass destruction, rogue states, and international terrorism combined to deliver a catastrophe to our world. And then the shame of knowing that I saw that threat day after day and did nothing to stop it.”… “I just think these dangers are there. I think it’s difficult sometimes for people to see how they all come together.” Here we see the hastiness for an action on hypothetical threats – that the two leaders themselves could not even specify or articulate – that resulted in two still ongoing wars. In the case of the War on Terror, the hastiness and speculation of the Precautionary Principle has proven disastrous; as there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the Afghanistan war is in its tenth year with no feasible end in sight.
Since the naissance of Precautionary Principle, the politician has sought to enact laws before clear justification can be established. According to the Precautionary Principle, the government must foresee the worst possible outcome of a potential threat and set policy appropriate to deal with it. The problem, however, is that the policymaking is therefore based on speculation that is not supported by scientific consensus but rather the policymaker’s worst fears of hypothetical threats.
The War on Terror has opened the floodgates in terms of how little scientific – or in its case intelligence – consensus needs to exist to enact public policy. With the banning of Four Loko, the Precautionary Principle has made its way into domestic policy. The banning of Four Loko largely follows the same pattern as its use with the War on the Terror. The danger posed by Four Loko, on a public health level, is purely hypothetical. Alcohol is abused no matter what form it takes. As we have already seen, combining caffeine and alcohol has been popular for centuries and had not previously warranted any significant government regulation. Therefore, the government cannot reasonably conclude that its danger is greater than that of the myriad other caffeinated cocktails. Even with Four Loko’s banning, there is nothing stopping young drinkers from combining Red Bull and liquor or whiskey and cola. And while mixing caffeine and alcohol may be dangerous – like drinking too much of any alcohol – it is not in the realm of public health, which the FDA is charged with overseeing. The government’s reason behind banning Four Loko was that it felt it was addressing a legitimate threat. This threat, however, was irresponsibly propagated by media in what was essentially a moral panic, and panic is never based on reason. The result of this hypothetical and greatly over exaggerated threat was the banning of Four Loko and similar beverages. The greatest concern is how it affected the casual news observer. When reading outrageous headlines like “Four Loko Causes Fatal Crash”, the unquestioning reader is convinced of Four Loko’s supposed threat to public health. But like we have seen with Bush and Blair, government action for dubious threats seldom turns out well. Media, however, should not receive all of the blame. When moral panic erupts, government should serve as an impartial agent of reason; a wedge between irresponsible media and the scientific community. Most importantly, the Four Loko debacle shows us how “precautionary” actions like banning Four Loko merely give the guise of government acting to solve real problems. Instead of banning of Four Loko, the government should try to alleviate the real issues that fuel substance abuse. The government can use the Precautionary Principle and preemptively ban any substance it deems a threat with the appearance of protecting the public, but it will consequently never come close to improving the real issues it sanctimoniously pretends to be fighting against.
Going MADD
The Precautionary Principle and moral panic lead many to ask from where these phenomena of fear derive. Many of them derive from powerful Neo-Prohibitionist organizations that maintain close relationships with media outlets and policymakers. One such organization is Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), a special interest group founded in 1980 by Candy Lightner who started it after her child was killed in an automobile accident involving an intoxicated driver. As of 2011, MADD remains committed to fighting drunk driving, discouraging underage drinking, and helping victims of drunk driving accidents. The group has come a long way since its conception in 1980 but also rose to high levels of political influence. The height of MADD’s political influence occurred in 1984 when it successfully worked with the federal government to raise the drinking age across the fifty states by threatening state governments with infrastructure defunding if they did not raise their drinking ages from eighteen to twenty-one. It was shortly after this in 1985 that Lightner left MADD because of what she saw the organization she created as “overzealous” and “too Neo-Prohibitionist.” After MADD began lobbying to lower the Blood Alcohol Content threshold – the level at which one is considered too intoxicated to operate vehicles – Lightner is quoted as saying, “Police ought to be concentrating their resources on arresting drunk drivers not those drivers who happen to have been drinking. I worry that the movement I helped create has lost direction”. The fact that MADD’s founder left her own organization and now disassociates with it is telling of how unhinged Neo-Prohibitionist organizations have become.
On its website MADD states, “By drinking before the age of 21, a teen faces more obstacles to reaching his or her full potential,” and that, “Studies show that Europe has more underage drunkenness, injury, rape, and school problems due to alcohol. Since alcohol is more available there, it actually increases the proportion of kids who drink in Europe. This is reasoning is simply false and negates a study by the World Health Organization that ranks child welfare in the U.S. as twentieth out of twenty-one developed countries. Each of the nineteen countries with better child welfare than the United States have drinking ages that are eighteen or below. Thus, liberal drinking age laws do not correlate with low child welfare, if anything it is the contrary according to the WHO investigation. Another ludicrous statement by MADD reads, “More than 20,000 lives have been saved in the U.S. thanks to the 21 Minimum Legal Drinking Age.” The report that MADD refers to shows that traffic fatalities have steadily decreased since 1984. However, if one were to simply extend the timeline further back, one would notice a steady decrease in automobile fatalities since its peak in 1972. This decline in fatalities is not necessarily attributed to awareness or stricter enforcement of drunk driving laws, rather, they are logically related to advances in automobile safety. Thus, MADD has no business claiming that the National Minimum Drinking Age Act lowered the number of automobile fatalities. Instead, it shows the Neo-Prohibitionist delusions of an organization so committed to trying to eradicate drinking that its founder left as saying, “I didn’t start MADD to deal with alcohol. I started MADD to deal with the issue of drunk driving.” The most alarming aspect of groups like MADD is not their overzealous nature or distortion of data, but the level of influence they have exerted and continue to exert over the American government.
Absinthe: Four Loko’s Predecessor
In the early 1900’s moral panic erupted across the Western world. The authorities said countless young men and women were destroying their lives with the Green Fairy; the hallucinogenic result of Absinthe. It has been said that writers from Oscar Wilde to Arthur Rimbaud fell victim to this Green Fairy. The American government followed suit with many European governments and banned the green drink amidst this mass hysteria. This is where we find eerie similarities between the banning of absinthe and Four Loko. In both instances the beverages were enjoyed by young adults, both fell victim to moral panics, and both were misunderstood. In the case of absinthe, the hallucinogenic effects were largely fabricated and were actually stimulating effects. Four Loko was also demonized for stimulating effects; the same effects found in myriad cocktails. What separates these two beverages is time; from which absinthe has benefited. Many decades after its banning, countries across Europe began to lift the bans concerning the sale and use of absinthe. These governments realized that they banned the drink as a result of the irrational fear that came with absinthe’s hysterical moral panic. The stories of a generation of young artists going insane because of the hallucinogenic properties of absinthe were untrue and meant to instill irrational fear. Similarly, the ridiculous claims of Four Loko being “blackout in a can” or “liquid cocaine” are relatable in that they are hyperbolic and meant to induce moral panic. The most unnerving similarity between the two cases, however, must be the degree to which governments were willing to take popular products off the market based on little more than irrational fear. We have seen how the Precautionary Principle legitimated – in the eyes of government – the banning of Four Loko. And while the Precautionary Principle did not exist in the time of absinthe’s banning, similar rationale was given for its ban. That rationale shares a quality of hastiness with the Precautionary Principle. In both cases, public health concerns were exaggerated by irresponsible media, leading to moral panic. Also in both cases, special interest prohibitionist groups exerted considerable influence in the media. The governments – not institutions of reason – both caved into the pressures of irrational moral panic. If history supposedly teaches us to not repeat the mistakes of the past, then the U.S. government did not take heed with Four Loko, which speaks to the power of moral panic. Absinthe was not the first moral panic, and likewise, Four Loko will neither be the last. This is because moral panic is instigated by the powerful emotion of fear, and fear rarely leads to good decision making, in individuals and in government alike.
Conclusion
Even though Four Loko is just one product in an industry with countless alcohol manufacturers, its banning should not be treated with flippancy or dismissal. The ability of a government to regulate enterprise based on little more than dubious claims of protecting public health is a coercive power that must not be taken likely. Likewise, the media and special interest groups have proven to be highly influential in the regulatory focus of government by propagating mass panic based on demonizing youths and encouraging cultural elitism. Most alarming is the government’s refusal and/or inability to perform as an indifferent institution of reason as it allowed itself to be influenced by the irrational fear of moral panic. Having not learned from the banning of absinthe, the government based its regulation on this moral panic, which is alarming, because coercive institutions should never act upon irrational fear. Given the circumstances, the banning of Four Loko has no logical justification and therefore should have never taken place and represents a grave misuse of the regulatory power of government, a power that should only be used when the situation is understood within the margins of reason.
Interesting Sites
“History of the National Minimum Drinking Age Act.”
“Science & Environmental Health Network – Precautionary Principle: Essays.”
“The Precautionary Principle: A Common Sense Way to Protect Public Health and the Environment.”
“An Overview of Child Well Being in Rich Countries.”
“Power MADD – Washington Times.”
“Coffee Cocktails – Espresso Cocktails – Coffee Liqueur Mixed Drinks and Shooters.”
“Loco Over Four Loko” — Reason Magazine.
Also See
“The Power of Nightmares: the Rise in the Politics of Fear”, a BBC documentary by Adam Curtis
