Five inmates from Idaho are suing several alcohol producers for allegedly duping them about the effects of alcohol. Their billion law suit is based on the premise that alcohol caused the inmates’ crimes. They also argue that they would never have had a drink had they known that drinking could lead to alcoholism. The inmates fail to comment on their own personal responsibility.
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Choose Responsibility applauds the warnings issued Nov. 17 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission to four makers of caffeinated alcoholic beverages. Caffeinated alcoholic beverages pose an emerging threat to public health, and are associated with binge drinking and alcohol-related injuries. Choose Responsibility commends the FDA and the FTC for their swift action on this issue of public concern.
“The choice of responsibility works both ways,” said Barrett Seaman, President of Choose Responsibility. “We hope and expect young people to handle alcohol responsibly, but we also expect the alcohol beverage industry to police itself—both in its advertising and promotional materials and in its choice of products. Mixing caffeine and alcohol is a poor choice.”
The FDA’s action follows a November 2009 request to manufacturers of caffeinated alcoholic beverages to provide data on the safety of their products. After conducting an independent analysis of peer-reviewed literature, the FDA found that caffeinated alcoholic beverages do not meet the generally accepted standard of safety. Instead, caffeine is an “unsafe food additive” associated with “risky behaviors that may lead to hazardous and life-threatening situations” when mixed with alcohol.
The FTC letters warned that the makers of caffeinated alcoholic beverages may be violating industry standards of truth in their advertising campaigns. Both organizations have instructed the makers of these beverages to outline the steps they have taken to comply within 15 days.
Choose Responsibility applauds these warnings, and looks forward to more opportunities to collaborate with legislators and public health officials to promote a culture of responsible and safe alcohol consumption.
Choose Responsibility is a nonprofit organization founded to stimulate informed and dispassionate public discussion about the presence of alcohol in American culture and to consider policies that will effectively empower young adults age 18 to 20 to make mature decisions about the place of alcohol in their own lives. To learn more, visit www.chooseresponsibility.org.
Everyone probably knows someone who knows someone or heard of someone who is an alcoholic and down on his or her luck, but alcoholism effects many more people that we may know. It’s not the bums on the corner and those who have literally lost everything who have problems with alcohol, but also those who drink every single day without fail, those who have racked up DUI charges, those who don’t know when to stop drinking at a sitting and end up drunk every time, and these are everyday people. We all know them. Perhaps some of us have been them. Generally, I like to classify addiction as the condition which causes life to become unmanageable, but just because someone may drink everyday does not make his or her life unmanageable, right? Surely, this person could skip a day of drinking, but could they skip an entire week of consuming alcohol? What about a month? Even if this person never gets drunk from drinking everyday, it’s still a dependency forming habit and my guess would be that after a year of drinking on a daily basis, it would be virtually impossible for an individual to stop drinking for more than a few days. Does this make him a raging alcoholic? No, this makes him a functioning alcoholic and sometimes, functioning alcoholics are more dangerous than than those who are obvious with their alcoholism. No matter how it manifests itself, alcoholism is a deadly disease and kills from the inside out causing liver failure, organ shutdown and host of other serious health issues. For subtle alcoholism, the signs are hardly noticeable, and the alcoholic seems to have everything in order at home, at work, in his or her relationships, and generally gives no signs of trouble.
There is no science as to why some people are able to remain functioning alcoholics for long periods of time and others cannot hide their alcoholism, and seem to be screaming that there is a problem from the beginning. No matter what kind of alcoholic an individual may be, alcoholism is alcoholism and it’s danger is the same from one individual to the next. Regardless of how functional an alcoholic may be, there are always signs. This is why it is so important to know the warning signs, because to someone akin to these signs, even the most functional alcoholic cannot hide his problems.