Sarah Katz, 21, had a heart condition and was not aware of the drink’s caffeine content, which exceeded that of cans of Red Bull and Monster energy drinks combined, according to a legal filing
Sarah Katz, 21, had a heart condition and was not aware of the drink’s caffeine content, which exceeded that of cans of Red Bull and Monster energy drinks combined, according to a legal filing
Thank you, a rational take here, everyone has their pitchforks out and aren’t thinking logically about how to deal with it aside from ridiculous things like “it should be illegal!”
It is definitely a tragedy and I feel for the family and friends, however we shouldn’t be jumping to banning it. That is how we end up with a nanny state, some things need to be regulated of course and in this instance it needs to be extremely clear to customers how much caffeine they’ll be injesting.
There’s a lot of things I think are justified bans. Alcoholic energy drinks are a huge example because of the lethal way those two substances interplay on each other (a friend of mine died from a heart condition caused by having too many jaeger bombs). But energy drinks are not killing people left-and-right. And this is very probably the only death that will come from this Panera charged lemonade in its entire run, however long that is.
Even banning alcoholic energy drinks seems a bit too far, I’m generally more in favor of regulating and making warnings for those who are able to handle such things to be able to still enjoy them, rather then banning them because some have preexisting conditions or aren’t able to moderate themselves.
Definitely fair though, I wouldn’t argue strongly against limiting alcohol access in general as we as a society have normalized basically alcoholism and abusing it. I’m not sure what the right answer is on that one :/ I just generally prefer freedom to a sane extent over banning certain things.
For me in full understanding of how alcohol+energy drinks cause accute alcohol poisoning, I’m ok with forcing people to go through the work of combining them on their own. Nobody is saying you can’t sell red bull in a bar, only that you can’t buy a 24-pack of the stuff premixed.
My thought on banning has always been this. It’s fine to restrict a highly combined product if you allow its components. Someone mixing redbull with jaeger is thinking. Someone drinking a premade alcoholic energy drink is slightly different.
I’m comfortable with our current limitations on alcohol, personally…at least when they’re followed.
That’s definitely a fair point!