Food regulators have a new target: energy drink advertising.

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http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising- ... ens-151576

Is this a replay of the slow demonization of tobacco?

Will caffeine have a sin tax attached to it within 20-30 years, if not outright banned?

Anything that can be taxed will be taxed. In order the keep on being taxed the substance itself must be permitted.

There may be a bit of demonization toward marketing it at children, but I don't think so overall. Caffeine doesn't have nearly the plethora of harmful health effects tobacco does, and people tend to be sensitive about youth.

Oh, there has been overall demonization for some time now.

^ Haven't seen it here in New Zealand, where the general message is "Just don't overdo it, and she'll be right, mate."

Not always. For instance, several states tax marijuana even though it it is illegal there. More reason being if you are caught with it without the tax stamp, you are also charged with tax evasion. But to do that, the pure presence of buying tax stamps by itself cannot be used as probable cause of drug possession.

Oh man, Blumenthal. This guy just goes on random crusades about absolutely nothing.

Glad he's not AG in my state anymore.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5RmEYDxVCk[/youtube]

Hopefully, yes.

I have come to the conclusion that caffeine is evil. A worse evil than pot, because it is widespread and most people think it is Ok.

It seems that most people out there are constantly suffering from caffeine withdrawal syndrome between takes of it. Headaches? Feeling sleepy? If you drink two cups of coffee or a similar amount of caffeine then you can bet those symptons have something to do with caffeine withdrawal.

I currently sleep 6 hours a day and have quit caffeine months ago (because of chronic headache, I had a constant headache that lasted months, it was awful.) and I feel more awake than before than before. I used to fall asleep whenever the outside world was not interesting enough. So I thought more coffee would keep me awake. Turns out it was the opposite thing! Being a frequent caffeine consumer makes you *need* it to stay awake and any day you don't take it you have a headache. It is amazing. Oh, and my chronic headaches? Not there.

I don't think forbidding caffeine is a good approach to solve this issue. And I don't think it is appropriate to ban commercials targeting teens. But caffeine *is* evil. What we need is more information. Oh, and Tesla was right, again: http://www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/1900-06-00.htm

The negative effects of tobacco against those who consume it and those close to them are scientific fact. There is no argument about it. It has not been "demonized", in fact, we were too nice with it.

Last edited by Vexcalibur on 01 Aug 2013, 9:39 am, edited 2 times in total.

Cant agree with that. Have quit coffeine, because my partner and I try to conceive a child, and it working in the afternoon simply sucks because of me being so tired. When I have my free day, I always simply made a little sleepy, but during work I needed my caffeine (or better the similar stuff in green tea). But right now, I cant do that, and it simply completly sucks and I dont get my work done, as I could, and cant as well work as long as before, because of me being totally sleepy beneath 19:00. So I definitly want either my little sleepy during work, or my coffeine, but none of both simply sucks. ^^

About caffeine in general. I dont think you can compare it with noctine. The problem with nicotine was, that it was general accepted that everyone is allowed to smoke everywhere (at least it was that way in europe) and so people hardly couldnt choose if they want to smoke or not, because you cant choose to stop breathing. While I wouldnt know, how someone shall force you to drink caffeine. ^^

I think its good, if its recognizable in the shop, if you buy an energy drink, because some people simply dont know that kind of stuff, and think of it being a normal lemonade. But beside that, I think everyone shall do what he want, as long as he is allowed to recognize what he gets.

An issue with quiting caffeine is that it takes a lot of time to return back to norm, and in fact many of the changes caused by caffeine may be permanent. It is a messy thing. Also, since caffeine is hidden in many product it is very difficult to quit it for real.

I didn't mention it, but because of the chronic headache I also had to improve my sleeping habits. It turns out that it is also about the quality of the sleep and not just the time. Maybe that got more to do with it than quiting caffeine. hmnn

Where I live, you eat rather organic, so I dont think that the whole grain bread, the herb branch, the butter milk, or the carrots, apples, tomatoes, kiwi, ....involve any caffeine, or other food I normally eat. Quiting the rare beer and cigarettes from now and then, was no problem at all. But I could kill for a cup of green tea. ^^

When you say, it took longer until you didnt feel any effect of the missing coffeine, how long did you need? Its rather a month now for me, and until afternoon, I could sleep all day. ^^

6 weeks/7 weeks.

But everything is different for everyone. I know a lot of people claim that they never get to feel as good as they felt before quiting caffeine.

Easy solution: If you don't think energy drinks are good for YOU then don't use them.

I would agree with that, but when i worked in holidays in a supermarket, there was as example a kid, that was choosing a tindrink simply because of its optic. So I was very afraid to be accused of me involving in someone elses education child, and said so as well with many excuses, that I only wanted to inform that there is a lot of coffeine included. When the mum heard she was shocked, because of her thinking it was simply an lemonade.

Some people simply dont know that kind of stuff, and so dont know that they wouldnt like to buy it, because of the coffeine, if they dont know it and around here its in the supermarkets in the same area, where the lemonades are.

So as said, I think doing laws against that energy drinks is stupid, because noone else is affected by someone drinking that. But as costumer you should be allowed to know, that there is massively coffeine included. So I think a simply readable small "coffeine included" on the outside of the tin, was ok and is not involving in the customer desicion, but instead supporting his free desicion to choose or not to choose a drink he likes.

But then, why is it ok to stop teens from getting alcoholic drinks, but it is not the same about energy drinks?