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The Great American Saloon Series
Four Loko Consumption
The most talked about but least drunk libation in America.
Four Loko is the most talked about but least drunk libation in America. Michigan recently joined Utah, Oklahoma, and Washington in banning the alcoholic energy drink. And last weekend, Connecticut and New York strong-armed distributors into agreeing to stop delivering the boozy concoction.
The bans and scare stories intend to dissuade the public. But for drinkers, they pique our curiosity. Whoever said all publicity is good publicity probably works for Four Loko now.
I embark upon a quest not unlike Ponce de Leon’s search for the Fountain of Youth or the Crusaders’ attempts to drink from the Holy Grail. I long to sip the mythical Four Loko from its multicolored aluminum chalice (which can be redeemed for five cents here in Massachusetts).
I go in search of Four Loko at the supermarket-style liquor store down the street. The customer is immediately confronted with a complementary wine tasting. Cheese and crackers accompany. A policeman stalks, not because the store attracts shady customers but because the proprietors wish to scare them away. Grey Goose, Chimay, and Dom Perignon jump from the shelves into the affluent shopper’s carriage. You have arrived if you buy booze here. But has Four Loko arrived? Where is the 24-ounce sensation sweeping the nation?
I migrate from uptown to the bowels of the city. Here I won’t find Four Loko. Four Loko will find me. In this liquor store’s parking lot, keep-the-meter-running cabs await DUI-offenders dissuaded from driving but not from drinking. Inside, Bay State bottle-bill beneficiaries cash-in on can collection. At the register, sales of singles, nips, and discount 30-packs prevail. If not Four Loko here, Four Loko where?
A long walk to the back cooler brings me no closer to the coveted elixir. But I migrate leftward and the products steadily become more affordable and less delectable. At the ghetto end of the ice box — where 40-ouncers and malt liquors reside — the colorful can cacophony for which I search explodes in view: Watermelon, Fruit Punch, Grape, Orange, Blue Raspberry, Lemon Lime, Lemonade, and Cranberry Lemonade. After much inspection and indecision, I select Watermelon and Fruit Punch. As if this Four Loko Eden couldn’t get any more heavenly, the cashier asks for $2.68 per can. It’s the alcohol equal of a six-pack. But it’s the cash-register superior.
Should I mistake the oversize king cans for, say, Arizona Iced Tea, banner lettering near the mouth reminds: “CONTAINS ALCOHOL.” What would be redundant on an ominous bottle of Jack Daniel’s is necessary on the bright and bouncy can of Four Loko. Mixed-message schizophrenia prevails. And in case underage consumers missed that alcohol notification, the can features a “WE ID” button. Despite the container’s promise, neither the manufacturer nor the cashier asks for my license. The product that neo-prohibitionist solons and snobbish supermarket-style liquor stores have tried to deny me, I finally obtain.
But to properly prepare for this nectar of the godless, I lubricate its path with several Busch beers and fill my stomach with dinner for its anticipated guest. At long last, I crack the can.
Four Loko, we have met before. Then, you called yourself Mad Dog 20/20. Or was it Peach Schnapps? You are known by different monikers (Bacardi 151, Power Master, Night Train, etc.). But beneath your many guises your intent is forever the same: to get people really drunk really fast really cheap.
The Fruit Punch variant is saccharine sweet and heavily carbonated. Its taste evokes a wine cooler, but malt liquor — buried beneath sugars and sweeteners — is its well-disguised base. There is a strong aftertaste. A drinker might find one pleasant enough; but the sticky-sweet remnant in the throat is a vomit-bomb ready to explode upon added ammunition. Moderation, because of the masked alcohol, because of the caffeine, because of the overpowering sweetness, seems the key here.
A discussion with a drinking partner concludes that my can of Four Loko recalls Luden’s cherry cough drops or that cheap powder-based children’s fruit punch known colloquially as bug juice. We decide his Watermelon version seems based on Jolly Rancher candy. “This is geared toward minors,” he matter-of-factly explains. “No adult wants to buy a can that has five different colors or a crazy color scheme.”
The many warnings of its potency compel me to slowly imbibe it over 90 minutes. On a scale of One to Four Loko, I am only a Two Loko. Despite my caution, the drawn out drinking rescues me from sober to buzz. And it does so in a sneaky manner akin to Red Bull and vodka, the popular bar drink that also combines the depressant alcohol with the stimulants taurine, caffeine, guarana, and sugar. It’s a different drunk.
There is no movement to ban Red Bull and vodka, or rum and Coke and Irish coffee for that matter. Drinkers have been combining alcohol with stimulants for centuries. What’s different here is that manufacturers, rather than drinkers or their bartenders, are mixing the booze with caffeine at the factory. That, combined with its nice price and viral marketing toward inexperienced drinkers, provokes the ire of paternalistic Puritans forever obsessed with what people unlike them do for amusement.
Just a few days after my experiment, I am alive but Four
Loko’s survival is precarious. A Massachusetts commission plans to
impose a statewide ban on Monday, and with the encouragement of
professional scold Chuck Schumer, the Food and Drug Administration
has clobbered the strange brew, too. I got my taste before the
government took it away.
Aside from an outright ban, there are calls to increase taxes on such drinks or make the labeling more explicit. But a better idea than can be gleaned from the Food and Drug Administration’s newly introduced visual warnings against cigarettes. If a cancer ward image accurately relays the story of tobacco use, then certainly the picture of a girls-gone-wild sorority house sums up the thousand words of Four Loko. Alas, telling the truth will only increase its popularity.
About the Author
Daniel J. Flynn is the author of Blue Collar Intellectuals: When the Enlightened and the Everyman Elevated America. He blogs at www.flynnfiles.com.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (67) | Leave a comment
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Pecos Pete| 11.19.10 @ 6:56AM
Big Mommy at work.
Adjunct| 11.19.10 @ 9:06AM
Right-Wingers Come to Defence of Four Loco!
Read all about it!
Four Loko and other alcoholic energy drinks (Tilt, Joose, Sparks) have swept this nation of young drinkers who love the cheap thrill of guzzling this sugary booze but don't know much about the possible deadly effects: alcohol poisoning, seriously impaired judgment, heart attack.
Several teens have died of heart attacks caused by consuming this hideous concoction.
Flynn neglects to mention this in his tedious government-get-out-of-my-business rant.
Loco " . . . provokes the ire of paternalistic Puritans forever obsessed with what people unlike them do for amusement. . ." says Flynn.
Hell, yes! It provokes my ire. Call me Puritanical if you like.
I swear, this magazine can be so goddamn infuriating in its aggressive stupidity.
Edward White| 11.19.10 @ 9:12AM
You said it, Adjunct.
American Spectator's twisted positions on current trends and events is often maddeningly perplexing . . . and irritating.
Four Loco is a dangerous drink consumed by reckless young people who often die from its toxic effects.
It should be banned.
287%| 11.19.10 @ 9:26AM
Here in St. Petersburg, a drunk driver told police he had mixed liquor with Four Loko and smoked marijuana before he drove his Chevrolet Impala through a red light in St. Petersburg, killing an Orlando man and his three sons.
Four Loco is a huge problem down here in Florida.
Don't be so effing cavalier in your attitude, Mr. Big Pants Flynn.
Four Loco is a dangerous drink aimed at teenage consumers who can't handle it.
Foru Loco? Ban it!
MM| 11.19.10 @ 9:28AM
BAN IT AND GODDAMN IT!
PhilTheCapitalistPig| 11.19.10 @ 9:30AM
Guess what? People have been doing the same thing for years with Jack Daniels, Jim Beam, Crown Royal, etc, etc.
So get off your high horse buddy. Should we go back to prohibition and compare numbers on how many people die?
Elizabeth Bizzell| 11.19.10 @ 9:42AM
I think any reasonable person would see the danger in Four Loco and would want the government to ban it. I certainly do.
Who, tell me, would drink a 23.5-ounce can of a concoction that mixes alcohol and massive amounts of caffeine and tastes like grape juice?
The answer: lots of young people.
And they are often killing themselves . . . and . . . others.
Tom| 11.19.10 @ 10:21AM
"And they are often killing themselves . . . and . . . others."
Really? Do you have data to back that up? And please, no links to this or that tragedy linked to these beverages. Hard data showing an increase of alcohol related fatalities tied to these beverages.
Before we remove the rights of adults, who are the only ones who may legally purchase these beverages, lets actually demonstrate there is a problem, ok? Passing laws based on the emotion of individual tragedies leads to bad laws and a slow erosion of our freedoms.
Eric Cartman| 11.19.10 @ 10:37AM
Using that logic, we should ban the movie "Jackass", too. And cars. Stupid kids don't need to drive anyway. They always kill themselves doing it. And pools. How many stupid teens kill themselves swimming. And these are legal things for teen to do. Alcohol, the last I checked, is still illegal for them to have.
DWPittelli | 11.19.10 @ 12:53PM
He " mixed liquor... Four Loko and ... marijuana .... Four Loco is a huge problem down here in Florida."
Perhaps, but Four Loko is the least intoxicating of these 3 ingredients. Marijuana is of course already illegal. But shouldn't the distilled hard liquor (~40% alcohol) get more blame than Four Loko (~10%) And wouldn't outlawing hard liquor prevent much more harm than banning caffeine in much weaker nondistilled drinks?
Jlizz| 11.20.10 @ 1:19PM
No. Marijuana is the least intoxicating, at least for someone who is experienced with it.
PhilTheCapitalistPig| 11.19.10 @ 9:38AM
You should join the women's temperance movement. I hear they are making big strides with prohibition and voting rights.
Papa Wappa| 11.19.10 @ 9:49AM
Four Loco goes good with porno.
I drink it in all night long porno watching. Caffeine keeps me going and the porno! Whoa! Talk about a good time. That Loco's got a kick that keeps you going and going! Boing Boing.
You goatta try it. Loco and Porno. Too hot!
Eric Cartman| 11.19.10 @ 11:04AM
Hey! You're right! Thanks! Ahhh, will the wonders of the internet never cease?!
Ray| 11.19.10 @ 2:58PM
"It should be banned."
Yea, ok, I guess we should all just stick to Peppermint Schnapps and Blackberry Brandy. Along with the occasional Malibu.
A flavored drink is a flavored drink. It doesn't matter if it's a Kamikaze or a Four Loco. The effects are the same. The more you drink, the drunker you get.
If you want people to stop killing themselves through alcohol, get them to stop drinking. Beer kills just as many people as Champagne, you know. This has NOTHING to do with political demographics.
JeffT| 11.19.10 @ 5:10PM
A cigarette is a dangerous thing consumed by reckless young people who OFTEN die from its toxic effects. And yet we continue to allow THEM to be sold. Such hypocrisy. Please, spare us the lectures about the evils of products without assigning the requisite responsibility in using said products. If moron teens can't buy this junk, they'll make their own.
Eric Cartman| 11.19.10 @ 9:34AM
Aren't teens already banned from alcoholic drinks? So you want a double secret ban? I know! Let's ban alcohol altogether, that way you couldn't make Irish Coffees or Rum and Cokes, either. I'M BRILLIANT!
PhilTheCapitalistPig| 11.19.10 @ 9:39AM
LMAO!!
Anna K. from Emory U.| 11.19.10 @ 1:39PM
Readers,
As you can see (or maybe you can't), the intellectual content of this blog is on the Jerry Springer, Trailer-Trash mentality.
As a student teacher at Emory, I sometimes assign AmSpec Online (maybe once a month) to demonstrate the shallowness and utter immorality of the far right.
I can always count on AmSpec to prove my point, which is this: AmSpec's angry readers are unintelligent misanthropists.
So, all of you commenters keep on keeping on, making fools of yourselves with nearly every posting.
What rich, right-wing garbage is spewed on this sight nearly everyday. It's a treasure chest of spiteful Tea Party rubbage that I use for the edification of my students.
They quickly grasp that right-wing dogma is not for them. That's why the majority of our graduates lean to the left--the left, which is more intelligent, kinder, and better-informed.
Thanks again for your "contributions" to my students' sterling education.
Anna K.
Barbara| 11.19.10 @ 1:49PM
As compared to the kinder, gentler morality of of the Soviets and Nazis on the far left? How about Margaret Sanger and her concentration camps for the mentally handicapped and abortion clinics in black neighborhoods? Then there is the "progressive" Woodrow Wilson who cheered the KKK in The Birth of A Nation and segregated the Federal government.
Eric Cartman| 11.19.10 @ 1:59PM
You're very welcome, Anna K. Now I know where we get Democrats. It seems they come from Emory U. and the simpering Anna K. Class for Whiners, the poor little darlings. They need the protection of your apron from the big, mean conservatives. *Sniffle* How could they expect to survive their teenage years without you there scolding them at every turn?
Anna K., the Nanny State Scold, says to drop the Twinkies and eat your rice cakes!
Anna K., the Nanny State Scold, wants you to drive a Prious and use one-square (both sides) when wiping!
Anna K., the Nanny State Scold, says, No profiling! We must check Granny's colostomy bag, but never, ever look at the 25-year old Muslim wearing the ticking diaper!
HA! You're hilarious! Are all Emory students such cowering turds, or just the people you hang around with? Oops. Time for their naps. Go heat their bottles and put them to bed (check their Pull-Ups, first). Nighty night, boys and girls.
Ilean Over| 11.19.10 @ 6:45PM
Ditto
Pete| 11.19.10 @ 3:05PM
Lovely elitist attitude. Wonder if she is aware of how far down the list Emory is for other elitists of her ilk?
Ray| 11.19.10 @ 3:05PM
Anna, thank you for reminding me why I carefully chose which schools my children will attend. If you purposely assign your students to "study" something that you've already decided is "shallow" and "immoral," especially when it comes to such varied topics like political discussions, then you are so obviously biased that you'd make a terrible teacher, but a wonderful propagandist.
I feel sorry for your students as they are experiencing indoctrination and not education. Hopeful my children will never have to suffer "education" under such a limited, biased mindset such as your own.
Dr. Crabtree| 11.19.10 @ 5:18PM
Thank You Anna Kook From Emory University,
We are learning by studying you too, over here at The Emory School of Medicine.
I'm teaching my Psychiatric Interns how to recognize and treat Sociopathic Trolls from The University Campus.
You are an interesting Volunteer Patient.Please come over to The Psyche Unit to pick up your Medications.
Yours, Dr. Amos Crabtree
Occam's Tool| 11.19.10 @ 6:31PM
Dear Dr. Crabtree: not 297.10 grandiose subtype? (The diagnosis exists; obviously, my applying it to Anna should be interpreted as a bit of snark and not an actual evaluation/diagnosis//insert other approriate disclaimers regarding non-establishment of physician patient relationship here)
Occam's Tool| 11.19.10 @ 6:07PM
In my secret identity, I'm a Mensan MD. And, unlike you, Anne, my undergraduate major involved SCIENCE. Geniuses are known to party hearty and be risque---Rice U has the highest beer consumption of any University in Texas. Or, for another example of risque genius, take Eric Cartman up there (and down below)!
Dr. Crabtree| 11.19.10 @ 8:36PM
I think we can help you to Mr.Tool.
Eric Cartman| 11.20.10 @ 1:59PM
Well, thank you for the nice words, Mr. Razor ;-) I'm honored.
Ilean Over| 11.20.10 @ 12:24AM
Your students probably love reading the comments on your comments and laughing behind your back. They all know you are a moron and enjoy you showing your ignorance to anyone who reads your idiotic blather. Plus it's a way to kill time in your boring classes and having a laugh around school at your expense.
Heywood| 11.20.10 @ 12:04PM
Anna K. from Emory U.-- you're fat, ugly and probably have warts on your nose. How's that for you students edification? Blow it out your derriere - for your students, that's french for poo-hole.
Negro X| 11.21.10 @ 5:02PM
Anna,
You are an idiot! A mindless drone unable to grasp but leftist dogma. I truly feel sorry for your students.
Melvin| 11.19.10 @ 7:02AM
Bloomberg picked a loser with salt, he should have went after the Loko or will the Loko find Mikey?
Bob K.| 11.19.10 @ 8:23AM
Good Grief!
So much ink, so many electrons wasted on this controversy! So many brain cells put to useless work! Better they had been damaged by drinking the stuff!
Louis Jenkins| 11.19.10 @ 8:32AM
Four Loko? Give me a break. I would not drink that stuff it was free.
PhilTheCapitalistPig| 11.19.10 @ 9:28AM
You are SO missing out. lol
rainmaker1145| 11.19.10 @ 8:42AM
Is Irish coffee not an “energy drink”?
Is rum and regular Coke not an “energy drink”?
Is not Mountain Dew and bourbon an “energy drink”?
All of these need to be outlawed. The people who take these dangerous drugs need to be sent to jail for stiff sentences as these so-called “drinks” are dangerous drugs that need to be put on the DEA’s Schedule 1 as “drugs that provide no real benefit and cause harm”.
The people who traffic in them are drug dealers who need to be put in jail for the rest of their lives.
Sound ridiculous?
So does putting people in jail for possessing a weed that never killed anyone, so get used to the idea that, when government starts to dictate what you can do with your body, there are no real ends to it. Just more tyranny and loss of freedom.
Occam's Tool| 11.19.10 @ 6:11PM
Regarding the weed: in New Zealand, the vast majority of my Maori admissions to my inpatient psychiatry unit were high on weed---admissions were based on danger to self/others criterion. And in MN, over 50% of my patients have positive MJ drug screens---admission is based on the same criterion as above. I'm not so sure how innocuous weed in the US is. I do know THC potency has gone up since the 1970s, and that THC is available legally as Marinol. (With a standardized dosage that has been approved by the FDA)
cats1cowboy| 11.19.10 @ 8:46AM
After sitting around drinking Four Loko, for hours and then getting sick, they decided to ban it.
PhilTheCapitalistPig| 11.19.10 @ 9:27AM
I know thats the truth! Those pansies need to step up their drinking game. Is it our fault that these amatuers can't handle their booze?!?!?
Patrick| 11.22.10 @ 3:36AM
Hah! Amateurs!
There's a reason I make it a point NOT to drive the nights of December 31st and March 17th. They drink copious amounts of swill unfit for beasts that they can get annihilated, then puke all night and into the day.
Those who were raised properly in the discipline of imbibing that moderation and quality are the keys to enjoying the evening, retaining dignity at night, and waking cheerfully in the morning.
As it stands, Four-Loko is formulated for the sake of drinking to excess. That someone dies from the stuff is no different than the idiot who chugs vodka and dies in his own vomit. Laws and prohibitions will not save anyone from their own lack of self discipline or the trivialization of the intoxicant, merely delay the inevitable.
Rich Fisher| 11.19.10 @ 9:09AM
From your description of the stuff I think the tacticts of my Aunt Martha 50 years ago make sense. She caught me trying to light up one of my uncles cigars one day and so rather than taking it away she actually helped me and made me take a few drags. At age 62 I still don't smoke. Put the kids in a controlled environment, give them a can and make them drink it. You'll probably not have to do anything to get 80% of them to never touch a drop again. The other 20% were would probably drink donkey piss if it were bottled and sold as the latest "high octane" buzz producer. Sometimes the "hair of the dog" will make cats looke pretty good.
Ilean Over| 11.19.10 @ 6:53PM
My dad made me eat 3 packs of Camels when I was 12 when he caught me smoking. I'm 78 and I now eat 62 packs a day. Thanks Dad
Stan Redmond| 11.19.10 @ 9:11AM
When big mommy Michelle Obama finds out how many empty calories are in alcoholic drinks they will be banned. It's for the children.
Call it what you will, "the camel's nose under the tent" "slippery slope" "foot in the door" it's one more thing for government to intrude on my liberties.
PhilTheCapitalistPig| 11.19.10 @ 9:25AM
Four Loko is AWESOME!!! I took one down a couple of weeks ago over the course of an hour, stood up, and was off balance after one! Like a friend of mine said, "college kids are dying from it, so I've got to try it!"
PhilTheCapitalistPig| 11.19.10 @ 9:34AM
How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?!?!?!!?
Pete| 11.19.10 @ 10:27AM
It would be racist to ban it, frankly. I have no statistics here, but the demographics of consumption are likely skewed towards those in the inner city. Don't they have the RIGHT to cheap alcohol? Who are you to take that away? Who makes the product...would be a hoot if it was a "minority owned" business.
Tim the Enchanter| 11.19.10 @ 11:25AM
I have to call discrimination on this one. The article mentions Mad Dog and Night Train, but what about those other cheap thrill wines, such as Cisco, Richard's Wild Irish Rose, and, of course, the granddaddy of them all: Thunderbird. Let's get it right, people!
Occam's Tool| 11.19.10 @ 6:22PM
What's the Word? Thunderbird! What's the Price? 90 thrice!
(By the way, the hilarious website on cheap wines is called bumwine.com.)
dc| 11.19.10 @ 11:40AM
Tim, I hoped someone would bring up Cisco. Foul stuff, tasted like a spiked wine cooler, but with 20% alcohol and a bizarre waist-down paralysis side-effect. No caffeine, but it was banned after a few years, too. Calling it a "wine," though, is a real stretch.
If individual states, cities, local governments want to ban this stuff, I guess I'm ok with that. But the feds have absolutely no role in this whatsoever. Most of the whining nanny-state totalitarians who commented above would immediately ban anything/everything their fragile psyches deem "dangerous", alcohol, ATVs, hunting, horseback riding, skiing, you name it--but they pretend by good intention and anecdotes to be limited in their aims. Bullsh*t--these are the prototypical "Liberal Fascists" who come to confiscate your property and regulate every aspect of your lives, with smiles on their faces (just pull up the latest photo of Elizabeth Warren, the unconfirmed Consumer Protection Harpy, if you'd like a visual).
Occam's Tool| 11.19.10 @ 6:14PM
Wouldn't Cisco be what Monty Python would call "a fine fighting wine?" Have you ever seen the website devoted to locating liquor stores that sell the 5 worst wines?
Sherm| 11.19.10 @ 1:06PM
The whole point is that there are dangerous things out in the world and if you don't have the capacity to understand and educate yourself/family- your done. It is how the world works. The smarter species survive and the dumb die. Sorry!
Barbara| 11.19.10 @ 1:53PM
What ever happened to Prohibition didn't work and you can't legislate morality? First we take the Four Loko awayand then we take their car keys. Or is it the other way around?
Too Many Tims| 11.19.10 @ 3:00PM
Say what you like but Ted Kennedy would never have let this happen.
solipslip| 11.19.10 @ 4:12PM
So Anna K, what is your "more intelligent, kinder, and better-informed" opinion on the upcoming ban on Four Loko?
We misanthropic reprobates await your gilded response.
Occam's Tool| 11.19.10 @ 6:19PM
I second the awaiting of fine Liberal Guidance on my wasted, worthless so-called existence. I grovel on the cold Minnesota ground awaiting Emory U's wisdom in antica....pation, for I am ignorant and evil devilspawn. Truly I ooze pus from every pore without Anna's guidance to lead me to a plane of existence higher than the lower gutters of East St. Louis which I currently occupy (spiritually). Many thanks for your mercy and forbearance, gracious and knowledgeable Anna, whose aura of etherealness blinds us lower maggot like beings.
ThePaganTemple | 11.20.10 @ 8:24AM
They came after Four Loco drinkers but I'm not a Four Loco drinker, so I said nothing, but they'd better stay the fuck away from my Kahlua or they'll be hell to pay.
paevo| 11.20.10 @ 11:39AM
Four Loco is perfect for this recession: cheap and strong...
Heywood| 11.20.10 @ 12:20PM
First-time offenders who test at 0.17 or above could face up to $8,000 in fines under the new Michigan "Super Drunk" law. The penalties include another first for Michigan: a requirement to install an in-car breathalyzer. That law went into effect around the same time they banned caffeinated alcoholic beverages--nicked named "blackout in a can". The caffeinated alcoholic drink Four Loko is twice the average size of a beer and has three or four times more alcohol content than a beer. Four Lokos sold for as low as $1.99, which leads people to drink more of them. It's marketed for younger people and if it's been proven a dangerous drink then the state has every right to do their oversight for public safety reasons. There's a lot of young people who don't know any better.
Patrick| 11.22.10 @ 3:44AM
And they will continue to not know any better, thanks to the nanny state.
And then they die from binging on Jaegerbombs, or some other crap, and you are back to square one.
chris| 11.20.10 @ 7:39PM
Anna,
A TA at Emory!
Talk about credentials!
I am dying to know what subject you teach. Please fill us in. Let me go out on a limb and guess that it starts with an "identity group" ends with "studies."
Come on Anna K., you have to end the suspense for me. I am not going to be able to sleep without knowing what subject a self-satisfied, complacent TA is responsible for, when she assigns reading comments at spectator.org as opposed to putting together an actual syllabus. Even if it is as such a prestigious institution as...gasp...Emory U.
Dennis Bergendorf| 11.22.10 @ 8:45AM
Just like Glenn Beck's red phone that never rings, enlightened folk like Anna never can give us any specifics. No, they can only engage in ad hominem attacks and demagoguery.
Why can't Anna explain why marijuana should be legalized, but sweet alcoholic drinks and Happy Meals criminalized? Or why W engaging in war in Afghanistan makes him a fascist, but O engaging in war in Afghanistan makes him a liberator? Or....
John DuBose| 11.22.10 @ 6:45PM
The proposed ban on Four Loco looks like a blatant power grab. All sorts of combinations of alcohol, sugar and cafein would have the same effect. So by the logic of the effort, the federal government will eventually ban everything but organic carrot juice.