Instant Reaction: What BU’s Four Loko Warning Should Have Said

You shouldn’t drink Four Loko, but not for the reasons BU mentioned in its recent health message. In case you didn’t see it, BU’s Director of Student Health Services, Dr. David McBride and BU Police Department Chief, Tim Robbins, just sent an email (reproduced below) to the campus warning about the effects of the drink Four Loko, a caffeinated alcopop which has recently become famous on college campuses and infamous in the news media for its potentially dangerous effects.

Dr. McBride’s and Tim Robbins’ letter, while perfectly reasonable and true, missed a chance to be truly persuasive by tapping into arguments that matter to college students. Instead of going for any kind of cultural argument, Dr. McBride and Officer Robbins simply stated that combining alcohol and caffeine is dangerous, and warned students not to do it. Don’t get me wrong, this is definitely true, and can be validated by common sense and science.

Unfortunately, I feel these types of arguments will have little appeal to us college students, and may actually make the problem worse by popularizing Four Loko’s effects. In fact, the email makes it sound like a pretty good time (4 beers and a cup and a half of coffee in one can?! Awesome!) Instead, here are two reasons not to drink Four Loko that I wish BU had mentioned in its announcement: the people who make it seem like sleaze balls (I can see the cease and desist letter now), and let’s be honest, it’s a pretty ridiculous beverage.

To be fair to Dr. McBride and Officer Robbins, they did bring up the fact that the makers of Four Loko aren’t concerned with our safety. But I wish they had gone further. I did a little quick research, and found this press release from “Phusion Projects,” the Chicago-based manufacturer of the drink. In addressing the incidents at Central Washington University, the company spends about three sentences claiming to be upset that their product hurt people, and then the rest of the release defending themselves without offering any solutions to the problem of abuse of their product, which they don’t ever deny.

Moreover, much of the company’s release is obsessed with the fact that many of the students may have been underage, noting that it doesn’t advertise to underage consumers and implying that overage drinkers somehow can’t get sick on the product. The company then links to their responsible drinking page, where they go to the great length of 5 paragraphs, much less than the press release explaining how they don’t advertise to underage drinkers because they place a “We ID” badge “prominently” on the product along with the 12.5% alcohol by volume. They also have a poster that states pretty clearly that the beverage contains alcohol.

This is, of course, absurd. The small black “We ID” button is set against a camouflage backdrop of bright colors that makes it nearly impossible to notice unless you’re looking for it (as you can see, their graphic includes bright red arrows that point out the “safety measures” they’ve taken.) What the company doesn’t mention is that they have to put these things on their product and produce the posters because it is deliberately designed (poorly, I might add) in this way to look like an energy drink and be drunk like an energy drink: very quickly, in quick succession. In other words, their responsible drinking campaign amounts to advertising the fact that the product is intended to be drunk irresponsibly.

Which brings me to the fact that their press release is so insistent about not advertising to underage drinkers that, to borrow a phrase from Shakespeare, I think they “dost protest too much.” It’s no secret that the makers of Four Loko are under considerable pressure from the government and watchdog groups for just that: designing their product to appeal to college students, and more revealing, high school students, where the beverage has become extremely popular among our younger siblings. And you know what? It is. Look at that label: it’s definitely designed to appeal to kids. Also, they have a fruit punch flavor. Can you really believe they’re not marketing to kids just graduating from Kool Aid?

Which brings me to my second argument: Four Loko is not a serious beverage. Case in point: you would never order one at a bar. In the same press release cited above, the company defends combining alcohol and caffeine, noting that it’s been done for years in the form of vodka/rum and coke, red bull and vodka, irish coffee, and even a cup of coffee after dinner.

While this is true, the logic of these comparisons is absolutely atrocious. The release specifically mentions that “Having coffee after a meal with wine, or consuming rum and cola, an Irish coffee or a Red Bull and vodka are all popular practices.” Unfortunately, it doesn’t mention that ordering Red Bull and vodka at a bar usually means getting five or six ounces of liquid at best (mostly Red Bull), not 23.5 oz all with the alcoholic content of a really strong IPA.

And what about drinking a few glasses of wine followed by a coffee at dinner? Well, Four Loko’s makers fail to mention that in this scenario, you would drink several glasses of wine over the course of two or three hours, followed by coffee and then usually bed. Four Loko is marketed and sold, like energy drinks, to be guzzled in small amounts of time, and its taste calibrated (yes, I’ve tried it) to allow you to do so. You’re way better off drinking the wine: it tastes better, causes pretty bad hangovers, and at least you’ll get some tannins out of it. The comparison to Four Loko just doesn’t work.

But Four Loko is worse than just containing too much of good things: it’s a poor excuse for a drink. For the most part, the point of drinking combinations of caffeine and alcohol is that it makes the alcohol taste better. The caffeine is a side effect. The point of drinking a Four Loko is to stay awake and feeling sober so that you can drink more Four Loko (and make more money for Phusion). Essentially, it’s a gateway product made to get kids to start drinking palatable alcohol early so they become hooked on it and drink more of it, both that night and over time.

So I have some advice, from one alcohol consumer to another: drink something you enjoy. Aside from being coercive, ethically bankrupt, and pretty much pointless, Four Loko tastes pretty bad: its only real benefit is that it’s more drinkable than other combinations of alcohol and caffeine. The downside is that it still tastes pretty bad compared to other, better cocktails, and you won’t realize how much you’re drinking, and possibly end the night in an emergency room.

Instead of that, try visiting some of the bars on this list (and that blog), where I can personally assure you that they make delicious, drinkable drinks that will definitely affect you (rather quickly, because they’re mostly alcohol rather than mostly filler) and don’t contain so much caffeine that you can’t feel those effects (I’m especially partial to Eastern Standard’s Pall Mall). They also all card, keeping kids out. Their purpose in life is to serve you an enjoyable drink, not to make you and everyone at your high school back home get used to the idea of drinking lots of alcohol.

If you can’t make it out, these cocktail recipes from some of the best bar-tending books of yesteryear aren’t too hard to make and will yield phenomenally delicious results that will have you enjoying alcohol enough to want to taste it rather than drown it out with artificial flavors like fruit punch (seriously, they claim not to market to kids but have a fruit punch flavor!).

So yeah, Four Loko is dangerous. We know that, but so is all alcohol. What makes Four Loko such a uniquely bad decision is that the company that makes it is really obnoxiously evil and, more importantly, there are better, often cheaper things to drink that you’ll actually enjoy. I wish BU wasn’t so uptight about alcohol that it could say these things to all of you. Fortunately, we can.

What’s your reaction? Take our poll and respond in the comments below with your thoughts about BU’s message and whether you drink Four Loko.

[poll id=”5″]


“A Message from the Director of Student Health Services and the Chief of Police”

Dear Friends,

We want to pass along this important message about a potentially dangerous alcohol drink that has received some national press recently. We share this information so that you can continue to make smart choices about your personal health and safety while at Boston University.

There has been much fanfare recently about a fruity malt liquor called “Four Loko” and the attendant side effects which have been referred to as,! “Blackout in a can.” Alcohol companies are targeting college students with these products without regard for your safety. National attention has been focused on this particular beverage because of a couple of very troubling incidents at Central Washington University and Ramapo College in Northern New Jersey.

We want to take this opportunity to provide you with some information about caffeinated alcoholic beverages and about mixing caffeine and alcohol in an effort to aid you in your decision making. Mixing alcohol and caffeine is not a new concept, but the recent cases involving students who were hospitalized after drinking beverages combining the two in a large can, is a cause for concern across college campuses and elsewhere around the co! untry. At the request of 18 attorney generals the Food and Drug Administration is reviewing whether the drinks are safe.

Four Loko is one example of a caffeinated alcoholic beverage. The 23 ounce can of this drink contains an equivalent amount of alcohol to four 12 ounce beers and 156 milligrams of caffeine. The danger here is not just the alcohol content but rather, the combination of high amounts of alcohol and caffeine.

Drinking high amounts of caffeine can cause symptoms like rapid heartbeat, shortness of breath,! dizziness, feeling jittery and nausea. When consumed in combination wi! th alcohol, caffeine may produce the feeling of being “wide awake” despite the fact that one may be intoxicated on alcohol. The fact that the depressant effects of alcohol are mitigated by the caffeine may lead people to continue to drink alcohol and thereby become dangerously drunk.

We strongly recommend that you steer clear of these types of drinks and from mixing alcohol with other caffeine containing beverages. We also recommend that you avoid mixing other substances with alcohol as a general rule. Boston University is concerned for your personal safety and we hope that you will use this information to make wise health choice! s.

With best regards,

Dr. David McBride
Director, Student Health Services

Thomas Robbins
Chief of Police

About Gabe Stein

Gabe Stein (CAS '11), was the founding CTO and Associate Publisher of the Quad.

View all posts by Gabe Stein →

8 Comments on “Instant Reaction: What BU’s Four Loko Warning Should Have Said”

  1. Is there anyone in the BU community who won’t join the chorus of whining, patronizing paternalism that we keep hearing about Four Loko? We get it–if you binge drink Four Loko, you could actually get sick. Who cares? Why doesn’t anyone talk about the benefits? It’s fun to get drunk and feel awake.

    Eastern Standard’s Pall Mall? Are you serious? We’re in COLLEGE.

  2. Thanks for the shout-out to drinkboston.com, Gabe. I’m not going to bash college students for drinking silly drinks any more than I’m going to bash little kids for eating cereal advertised on Nickelodeon. But, yeah, sometimes you have to bribe a little kid to eat an anchovy, and sometimes you have to prod a college student to try an adult cocktail, just to give them a glimpse of an interesting new world.

    1. Lauren: No, thank you, it’s a phenomenal blog. And yeah, in case it isn’t clear, I’m not bashing college students either for drinking silly drinks. I just think that it’s pretty absurd to choke down awful-tasting stuff from people who advertise to pre-teens when smooth, delicious alternatives can be had that, if you’re doing it to get drunk (not that I endorse the practice), do just as good a job for not that much more money (per ounce of alcohol, anyways). Although this is me being cynical, you might as well enjoy the actual drink, especially if that’s the only part you’re going to remember.

  3. I agree that BU was nuts for sending out what was essentially a free advertisement for Four Loko. But Four Loko is not forcing anyone to drink their products. If teenagers and underage college kids are stupid enough to abuse Four Loko’s product, it’s their own fault (and maybe their parents’ if they’re in high school). Four Loko shouldn’t be chastized for releasing a legal product, and they shouldn’t be blamed for stupid children illegally abusing their product.

  4. I agree with you – Four Loko pretty much sucks. I tried the grape one, it tasted like Dimetapp and is a low rent version of the classic “Vodka Red Bull”.

    While I don’t disagree with any of your points, people are clearly drinking this to get obliterated before they go out and have some cheap keg beer at frat party X, Y or Z. But BU sending out an e-mail telling people not to drink that is about as effective as telling people not to drink in general. The whole Four Loko craze underscores the terrible job schools like BU are doing in dealing with binge drinking by vilifying alcohol consumption.

    Great article, I encourage you to read my further thoughts on the matter: http://mayh3m.com/?p=423.

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