If you're a young adult or have kids in their teens, you're probably familiar with energy drinks. There’s a good 75 or so of them on the market: They contain herbal and other ingredients like ginseng, guarana and taurine, but the real energy comes from caffeine, sometimes in amounts three times that considered safe for an entire day. To make matters worse, some now also contain alcohol. And they may be contributing to the underage and adult drinking problem, and adding to the 22 million people in America currently in need of drug and alcohol detox and rehab.
The packaging of alcoholic energy drinks makes them almost indistinguishable from those without alcohol. Even some cashiers can't tell the difference: One Utah store clerk sold an alcoholic energy drink to an underage buyer even though the cash register computer system alerted her that ID was needed. Her reasoning? Anything with alcohol in her store comes in four packs or six packs.
The coordinator of the Michigan Coalition to Reduce Underage Drinking accused manufacturers of predatory marketing – making energy drinks with alcohol look like those without. When he appeared before a panel on underage drinking, he presented three containers, two alcoholic and one non-alcoholic, to prove his point.
The packaging is also likely to fool parents: Without actually reading the ingredients or taking a close look at the container, parents could easily conclude that there's nothing wrong with what their kid is drinking – it's just going to give them energy, seems innocent enough.
But alcoholic energy drinks do far more than that – they may even send your kid to alcohol detox or the ER. Some of these drinks are stronger than anything your kid has ever had. Beer, for example, contains 3 to 6 percent alcohol; some energy drinks contain 8 percent.
Combining the alcohol with the energy components presents another very dangerous problem: obscuring the effects of the alcohol and the possible need for alcohol detox. The energy components make you feel more alert and less sleepy but you are, nonetheless, impaired.
What happens when the usual warning signs aren't there? How many kids or adults will get behind the wheel of a car thinking they're still safe? How many kids will take binge drinking to a whole new level and be dead before they even realize they're drunk?
Parents should be alert to the potential danger of alcoholic energy drinks. Learn which ones contain alcohol, and which don't. If your kid's drinking them, put a stop to it. And find out what else they’re drinking. It usually takes from six months to two years for parents to find out their kids have a drinking problem. Check into it now and, if there's a problem, get them into alcohol detox and rehab before their drinking turns into full-blown alcohol addiction.
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