Regulate This!

How many times can college students obtain alcohol poisoning before their beverage of choice is banned? So what if that drink of choice comes in a wide variety of flavors that packs a caffeine punch that rivals a vente Starbucks coffee, and did I mention that is has 12% abv! Seriously folks, what does not sound fun about this beverage? Campuses across the United States have come to love 4 Loko, but legislators are rallying against this fine beverage in order to get it banned. Why must the government always interfere with our fun?

Government, especially big and intrusive governments, love to tell people what is bad for them as opposed to allowing a citizen to reach a rational conclusion about their own well being. State legislators are pointing to a large quantity of college parties that in recent weeks have yielded an increasing number of college students riding in an ambulance because of 4 Loko. The argument is that the energy the beverage provides consumers, along with the high alcohol content, create a perfect storm that often leads to binge drinking and ultimately alcohol poisoning. So the government has witnessed our expressed desire to get annihilated on weekends (or weekdays if you are into that sort thing) and claim that we don’t know well enough to drink 4 Loko.

Ladies and gentleman, the intoxicated masses, 4 Loko is not evil! 4 Loko is not out on some evil scheme to destroy our livers and cause our nights of debauchery to end in the ER. We are! Consumers are rational beings who are able to make intelligent decisions based on their wants and needs. Any intelligent human being who purchases 4 Loko realizes what they are getting themselves into, and as such should approach this amazing beverage with a bit of caution. Just because you have a few 4 Loko because that Econometrics test was ridiculously hard doesn’t mean you should continue drinking after you are already drunk. People drink for a wide variety of reasons, people get blackout and violent drunk because of some slightly more specific reasons. Consumers are the ones at the helm of their evenings, we make decisions (some of them dumb) because we want to and somehow in our reasoning we occasionally decide that cracking out the Jose Cuervo after a few 4 Loko is a good idea. 4 Loko can, in fact, be consumed responsibly and still lead to an amazing night of partying.

Who is the government to tell us what we can or cannot drink? We know smoking cigarettes and cigars can lead to lung cancer, yet we may choose to smoke still. We know that eating rare meat may increase chances of obtaining colon cancer, yet we still eat medium rare burgers. We know that 4 Loko is a potent alcoholic beverage that might lead to a less than fun trip to the ER, but we drink it anyway! The point is that we are rational beings and are capable of reaching our own conclusions, we do not need the government telling us what drinks are appropriate for consumption or not. 4 Loko is a revolutionary product, it contains positive and negatives for consumers, and as long as we, as intelligent members of society, are aware of these factors I see no reason to ban it.

Andrew Plocica