Four LOKO BANNED! The West Seattle Connection

[HolyKow]

Four Loko is now banned by the Washington Liquor Board…Good move says I, but I wanted to be sure to remind all that we have a very personal and very outstanding case in West Seattle that has this vile poison firmly interwoven into the details of the crime.

Remember hate crime in May where the young man was held hostage and beaten severely for HOURS by people he claims were calling him racist names and blaming him for their ills in life? They were HIGH on FOUR LOKOOOOOO…..

hk

Link to WSB story ref’d above with the police report indicating the cop found the cans of poison at the scene of the crime and in the perps possession when he found them too:

https://westseattleblog.com/2010/06/followup-police-report-from-highland-park-teen-beating

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[todd_]

I was happy to read on msn that it has been banned.

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[biankat]

dumb – it’s not the state’s business. people can easily make caffeinated alcohol drinks elsewise. alcohol is alcohol. if they’re gonna ban this, they may as well ban all alcoholic beverages.

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[Genesee Hill]

I agree that it may be dumb, but it is the state’s business. Effective November 18th you will no longer be able to buy it in Washington State retail establishments.

I’ll just stick to my Old English 900 with a Vivarin chaser!

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[JanS]

GH….now that’s class ;-)

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[biankat]

i’d better stock up! or at the very least, simply TRY this wonderful concoction. i think i’ll look for a can on the way home…

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[Genesee Hill]

biankat,

Yeah, now that you mention it, I think I will try some too!

I have a feeling that it may taste like good ‘ol Mad Dog 20-20 with 8 tablespoons of sugar added!

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[mpento]

Well back to the red bull and SoCo. You mean leaving the state in charge of selling liquor doesn’t really control the sale of alcohol! Apparently the right to choose only applies to killing your children.

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[DP]

biankat said:

people can easily make caffeinated alcohol drinks elsewise. alcohol is alcohol.

Perhaps . . . but I suspect there’s something about drinking this stuff out of a can — a can that looks like an energy drink, I might add — that makes it a little more susceptible to abuse.

At the Governor’s press conference today, she mentioned that each of the people who OD’d on Four-Loko at the CWU party in October claimed they’d only drunk one can of the stuff, when in fact they’d had several.

They just couldn’t remember anything after the first one.

The reason this happens is because of the caffeine. According to Governor Gregoire, getting drunk on Four-Loko is like being drunk and wide awake at the same time. So in that sense, it’s really not like other forms of alcohol.

biankat please keep us posted with the results of your experiment. But remember: don’t go by the number of cans you think you had. Go by the number of empty cans the paramedics actually find at the scene.

– David

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[Jacob]

What a stupid nanny state we live in.

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[redblack]

genhill, when did they add 100 to olde english?

soco and redbull. four-loko. make you crazy and stupid. the drink in question actually has crazy in its name.

(me? i do a couple of rails after my alcohol/energy bombs – just to take the edge off.)

seriously, jacob? nanny state? the police have a hard enough time without having to chase around a bunch of hopped up/poisoned idiot juvenile delinquents just so someone can make a buck. talk about throwing gas on a fire…

biankat, as DP said, let us know how your bathtub meth drinks turn out.

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[Jacob]

Absolutely being serious redblack. Not having access to these drinks isn’t going to curb underage drinking in the slightest. They will just go back to mixing their own drinks, as they have always done.

The media has put so much ridiculous information out about this being a ban on four loko, but joose, sparks, and any other alcoholic beverage with caffeine will also be forced off the shelfs. The states primary excuses for banning these is that they are too potent, and marketed to kids.

We can still order vodka-redbulls and jagerbombs at any bar, so this has nothing to do with “poison” in our bodies.

I’ve also gotta call bullshit on the marketing to kids. Just because they don’t taste like a typical ice beer or malt beverage, and have a bright colored can, doesn’t mean they are being pushed on kids. What are they going to ban next? Mike’s hard lemonade? Smirnoff flavored vodkas?

Responsible retailers and a little bit of education about the potency of these drinks could easily solve the problem (if there even is one). I don’t need laws banning me from consuming products that can be used responsibly.

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[DOC]

I hate this Nanny state for doing all those things like make up wear helmets and seatbelts. They take away my right to get high on crack while jaywalking and now they take away something that I KNOW I would have loved as a teenager, but realize now how stupid and horrible of a drink combination it is. What’s next, they take away my right to drive 130MPH on the freeway with some sort of sign system? Nanny State indeed!

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[Jacob]

I guess we should ban McDonalds too for marketing to kids and making them fat, right doc?

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[datamuse]

Funny you should mention that, Jacob.

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[redblack]

is there a way to use four-loko responsibly? that crap sounds like a recipe for irresponsibility and violence.

i don’t really care about the debate about minors, either. i don’t think adults should mix red bull and vodka. i’ve had friends who drink that – responsibly even. it… changes them.

guys i work with who drink full throttle or whatever get all twitchy and make me nervous. especially around power tools.

it ain’t the alcohol part i disagree with. that’s already banned in the workplace, and with good reason.

so is meth, and that’s immediately what i think of when i’m working next to someone who’s been chugging rock stars all morning.

when i imagine those guys drunk at the same time, i’m chris gregoire’s biggest fan.

and i don’t recall hearing accusations of seattle being a nanny-state when they banned malt liquor sales in and around pioneer square because street folks were getting loaded – cheaply and quickly – and harassing or assaulting “nice” people in drunken rages.

some things just shouldn’t be mixed.

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[HunterG]

DP, I must know the code you use to make the fancy “Speech Bubble”.

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[miws]

“DP, I must know the code you use to make the fancy “Speech Bubble”.

Hunter, I ain’t DP, but here it is:

[blockquote cite=]”DP, I must know the code you use to make the fancy “Speech Bubble”.[/blockquote]

Just replace the flat brackets with the <pointy brackets>.

Mike

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[BigPhil]

There are reasonable things for health and safety that the state ought to be able to control; seatbelts, mandatory licensing and insurance, etc. This isn’t one of those things – it’s a knee jerk reaction because a few loose cannons went crazy – people do that with just alcohol, too, but we don’t ban this. Banning the product instead of punishing the perpetrators is the wrong way to go about things.

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[JoB]

BigPhil..

i can’t disagree with you more.

making that product less accessible to kids is a matter of public safety.

banning it until it can be regulated.. as it is in other states.. is the only reasonable thing to do.

the alcohol content of that can varies greatly depending upon the state regulations where it is sold.

lowering the alcohol content..

or conversely.. selling it only through state liquor stores.. would make a huge difference.

truthfully..

i don’t see why so many adults are yelling nanny state for a product they wouldn’t choose given a better choice.

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[austin]

Something about this that tickled my admittedly dark sense of humor is that after the Gov announced the ban there was a buying rush for this crap near Gonzaga. As if this is the only way the kids can figure out how to get drunk!

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[BigPhil]

JoB – I don’t understand. How is this more accessible to kids than alcohol or wine? WA law is admittedly new and strange to me, drawing the line at hard alcohol, but there is a difference. It’s all only sold in liquor stores in CO.

Hard alcohol is 20-90% ABV, beer and wine are like 5-12%. Four Loko is only 12%, that’s essentially the same as malt liquor or weak wine, which kids can get just as “easily.”

Banning it affects adults too, and that’s why I draw the line. If you want to make it less ‘accessible’ to children, then the concern is the same for beer and alcohol.

I likewise hate kneejerk reactions – there is nothing different about Four Loko than something like a rum and coke. The FDA wants to “investigate” whether alcohol and caffeine are “generally considered safe” and I’m going to say duh on this one. Mixing caffeine and alcohol has been commonplace for hundreds of years. As mentioned by many others above me, you can get the “Four Loko” affect by mixing wine with cola. Banning it outright does nothing to address the real problem, which is binge drinking. There are dozens of other energy+alcohol drinks out there and banning by name is foolish.

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[BigPhil]

As an (unfortunately) apt example, I offer my own college experience. When I was young(er) and stupid(er) in college, our drink of choice was Boone’s Farm (7-10% alcohol “wine” – http://www.ourkitchensink.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/boons.jpg) mixed with Vodka and chased with energy drinks. Worst hangovers I’ve ever had, stupidest things I’ve ever done, but no different than Four Loko. The problem was not Boone’s Farm or Vodka or Energy drinks or Four Loko, it was a mindset where binge drinking was the norm, even the expectation.

Those dumb ass kids at CWU who went to the hospital after drinking Four Loko caused this but it is not the fault of the alcohol.

It’s just like banning guns because they kill people. Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. You can place reasonable *restrictions* on who can purchase it and when but banning it outright is declaring that something is so violently against common decency and civil society that we can’t even trust citizens to make reasonable decisions about it – like HARD drugs. In order to justify something that terrible, you’d have to have some sort of evidence that four loko was empirically worse, like it contained ephedra or something. This is just caffeine + taurine + ethanol.

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[biankat]

so i didn’t get a chance to stop last night. strangely enough, i had a dream about my tasting. in the dream it was a mix between sangria and boonesfarm. but i digress…i just picked up several cans from my local 7-11. what a variety! and they had plenty in stock in case you want to get your drink-on. i’ll give these a whirl tonight and report back on my findings. stay tuned!

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[JoB]

Big Phil…

Yes, Four Loko has about the alcohol equivilent to malt liquor (beer) and some fortified wines…

but without the taste

and with a caffeine kicker so you can consume more alcohol without feeling impaired.

oh.. and all that for $2.00 to $2.50

as for comparing this drink to rum and coke..

DP once chided me that a drink is a drink..

so that rum and coke analogy is more like a triple shot rum and coke….

i couldn’t find the caffeine content of Four LOKO to determine whether it contains a single, double or triple shot of coke… but i am guessing it is more like a triple than a single.

I am guessing there are a lot of people out there wondering where you can match that deal at a local bar?

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