America is Loco for Four Loko
Posted on November 23, 2010 | By The Bon-Vivant | 3 Comments
Few things can illuminate the fact that we’re a nation governed by jackasses as completely as how our officials treat the production, marketing, and consumption of alcohol.
Four Loko – John Adams would have drunk it if he could.
Witness the recent furor over Four Loko, a ridiculous and sugary prepackaged cocktail of caffeine and booze, a drink whose sole market appears to be people too lazy to pour a can of Red Bull into a half-full bottle of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill, in other words, college students.
When it was reported by various sources that our precious 20-year-old tykes were endangering themselves by chugging this abomination and lapsing into a state of unconsciousness, the caped avengers of bureaucracy and public morality leapt into action and sought to ban Four Loko.
Nevermind that, at 12% alcohol, a 16 oz can of Four Loko is no more dangerous by volume than a glass of merlot and a tall cup of coffee, it was a national scourge, “legalized liquid cocaine“, a perfidious gateway drug to Kahlua and espresso!
But, don’t let me do all the mocking, here’s a lengthy piece in defense of getting f’up that’s worth your while.
The lust for irrational excess is not original to Four Loko or college fraternities–from the Roman vomitoriums to the unregulated halls of public drunkeness in 18th century America, taking pleasure in over-indulgence has been a hallmark of human behavior. While many of the country’s founders considered overindulgence in alcohol a social pox, just what that constituted is hard to measure today. One of the most disciplined of the founders, John Adams, was described by descendants as having a tankard of hard cider before breakfast every day. Likewise, a preserved bar bill from a party to celebrate the Constitutional Convention reveals an athletic appreciation for alcohol. The 55 attendees at a Philidelphia tavern were billed for 54 bottles of Madeira, 60 bottles of claret, 8 bottles of whiskey, 22 bottles of porter, 8 bottles of hard cider, 12 bottles of beer, and 7 large bowls of alcoholic punch.
Humans, especially young humans and Founding Fathers, occasionally want to get f’ed up. And outlawing Four Loko will have no appreciable effect on the fulfillment of this desire, not when it’s still possible to make your own version of Four Loko by pouring a fifth of grain alcohol and a dozen No-Doz into a gallon of Gatorade.
If we’ve learned anything from the sorry experience of Prohibition, it’s that people will get their drink on no matter what you do to prevent them, and indeed, the social ills caused by attempting to prevent them usually far out weigh the supposed benefits.
So step off, America’s jackasses. Let the people have their soda poppy booze buzz.
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3 Responses to “America is Loco for Four Loko”
The Liquor Locusts
"The harsh, useful things of the world, from pulling teeth to digging potatoes, are best done by men who are as starkly sober as so many convicts in the death-house, but the lovely and useless things, the charming and exhilarating things, are best done by men with, as the phrase is, a few sheets in the wind." ~H.L. Mencken
The Dangers of Thirst
"Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need - a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing." ~Jerome K. Jerome
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The Jug of Empire!
"How solemn and beautiful is the thought that the earliest pioneer of civilization, the van-leader of civilization, is never the steamboat, never the railroad, never the newspaper, never the Sabbath-school, never the missionary -- but always whiskey!" ~Mark Twain
May 13th, 2012 @ 6:43 pm
As a nation, we have become too easily swayed by media uproar about every little thing that teens are doing these days. Never mind that they might be shooting heroin, they are drinking Four Lokos! I saw it on Nancy Grace!
One day we will wise up and stop treating harmless things as taboo. Europe has the right attitude. Kids there are smoking a pack of unfiltered cigarettes and chugging a liter of espresso a day by the time they’re twelve. Ease off, uptight Americans. If Four Loko is the worst thing you have to be worried about, your kids will be just fine.
July 6th, 2012 @ 3:28 pm
You sir, are preaching to the choir.
September 20th, 2012 @ 3:40 pm
[…] the crappy liberal elites who know better than you what you should consume get-as detailed in an earlier post by my colleague The Bon Vivant. So, tell the Nanny State to kiss your Four Loko and get out of your […]