Alcohol-industry watchdogs with the Center for Science in the Public Interest are seeking a court injunction that would ban beer makers Anheuser-Busch and Miller Brewing Company from selling so-called “alcohol energy drinks” (yes, facially an oxymoron), report the drug treatment and prevention advocates at Join Together.
The CSPI argues that the drinks – “adulterated products” that the group has dubbed “alcospeed,” which combine booze and stimulants, like caffeine, guarana, or ginseng – are marketed so as to appeal to underage drinkers. Indeed, the group notes that the alcospeed beverages – including A-B’s “Tilt” and “Bud Extra” beverages along with Miller’s “Sparks” drink – are similar in appearance and flavor (gag) to other nonalcoholic, quasi-energy drinks that are heavily marketed to kids. “Short of decorating these cans with Hannah Montana or Spiderman, it’s hard to see how you could do a better job of marketing alcospeed to young people than Anheuser-Busch and Miller are doing,” CSPI litigation director Steve Gardner told JT. “They have a sugary taste” – gag, gag, gag – “and colors that make it look more like Moutain Dew or Orange Crush than regular beer. It’s a recipe for disaster and the companies should be held accountable.”
Seriously: sugary tasting, orange-colored beer? Sounds most like a recipe for yak. (Of course it is true that teens aren’t exactly well known for their discriminating tastes – and certainly not when it comes to booze: think Mickey’s Big Mouths (notably, or not, also a Miller beverage), or those god-awful two liter bottles of Bartles and Jaymes wine coolers. Good lord. Who else would drink that crap? So, maybe CSPI has a point here.)
The group will seek a permanent injunction to prevent the companies from “manufacturing and offering for sale” any alcoholic beverage containing any number of stimulants “not generally recognized as safe for use in alcoholic beverages” and will seek to prohibit the booze companies from making any claims about “energy-boosting attributes” of their speedy, sugary beers, JT reports. On Feb. 28, the CSPI wrote to A-B and Miller, offering a 30-day window for settlement talks; CSPI also told JT it would ask the court to force the companies to hand over all profits from the sale of speed beer to be placed in charitable fund.
Francine Katz, an A-B veep for communications and consumer affairs, said that the company had been “improperly singled out by CPSI as a publicity generating tactic” and that both its Tilt and Bud Extra drinks had been approved by fed regulators – but not, apparently, by the taste police.
This article appears in February 29 • 2008.