Now the march is on to ban energy drinks - for the children!

Mary Claire O'Brien, a professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine who helped foment the moral panic that led the FDA to ban Four Loko and three other brands of caffeinated malt beverages last fall, says the fight against demonic drinks is far from over. "These premixed alcoholic energy drinks are only a fraction of the true public health risk," she and co-author Amelia Arria, a researcher at the University of Maryland School of Public Health, warn in a recent Journal of the American Medical Association commentary. "Regular (nonalcoholic) energy drinks might pose just as great a threat to individual and public health and safety." O'Brien and Arria offer "3 reasons" for this conclusion:

First, caffeine has been clearly associated with adverse health effects in susceptible individuals.... Second, the practice of mixing energy drinks with alcohol—which is more widespread than generally recognized—has been linked consistently to drinking high volumes of alcohol per drinking session and subsequent serious alcohol-related consequences such as sexual assault and driving while intoxicated....Third, regardless of whether energy drinks are mixed with alcohol, recent research suggests that, even after adjustment for potential confounders such as heavier drinking patterns, energy drink use might confer a risk for alcohol dependence and perhaps nonmedical prescription drug use.

Then again, it might not. Like the association between caffeinated cocktails and risky behavior, the association between energy drink consumption and alcohol dependence may have more to do with the pre-existing characteristics of people who favor these beverages than the psychoactive effects of caffeine. O'Brien and Arria concede as much, although they also raise the "concerning" possibility that "caffeine's neuropharmacologic effects might play a role in the propensity for addiction." The title of their piece, "The 'High' Risk of Energy Drinks," allows them to mislead the public about the magnitude of the danger while hiding behind a pun.
CR