Credit: via Dude Truth
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Washington’s state liquor control board voted to ban Four Loko today, sending the beverage packed with caffeine and alcohol to join old-school Sparks in the grave of drinks too crazy to live.

The vote come on the heels of last month’s “blackout in a can” incident, where nine Central Washington University students wound up in the hospital with near-lethal blood alcohol levels after consuming Four Loko.

As this story notes, Four Loko might have gotten a bad rap in that incident, since according to the toxicology report, the students drank beer, vodka, rum, and “possibly illicit substances” throughout the night, too. Don’t get me wrong, Four Loko is a gnarly drink, but simply making Four Loko forbidden will do zilch to solve the serious problems of addiction and binge drinking.

In Oregon, the OLCC is possibly contemplating a ban on the drink, right now encouraging retailers not to sell the Loko.

Image via.

Sarah Shay Mirk reported on transportation, sex and gender issues, and politics at the Mercury from 2008-2013. They have gone on to make many things, including countless comics and several books.

23 replies on “Prepare to Smuggle Four Loko to Washington”

  4. They said on NPR that a can of that stuff has as much alcohol as a bottle of wine, but that looks like a 24 ounce can to me, which is about the size of a bottle of wine. If that guy has normal-sized hands, maybe it’s a 16 ounce can, meaning it has 50% more alcohol than wine. Worth noting.

    And Sparks was the fucking best.

  6. Rather than solving the far more complicated issue concerning the connection between binge drinking and date rape on college campuses, legislators scapegoat a(n admittedly disgusting) beverage. Way to go, G-Men. That’ll make it all better!

  8. The point isn’t to stop binge drinking, it’s to stop companies from selling binge drinking.

    @Ovidius: Is that the new Chewbacca defense? Are convicted serial killers just scapegoats so society can continue to ignore the larger and more complex issue of murder?

  9. I don’t know what the Chewbacca defense is, nor what I’m supposedly defending. Nor do I know how you can sell binge drinking. If I sell someone tennis shoes, am I selling them running? I’m not sure how this works.

  10. guspasho, your response is nonresponsive. The point is that college kids would binge-drink anti-freeze if that’s what it came to. Taking away 4loco just means they’ll have to walk uphill both ways in the snow to mix Red Bull with Everclear like we had to in my day.

    The beverage du jour is indeed a scapegoat and is like singling out the Toyota Highlander for causing climate change.

  15. @Oregometry: But you’re mixing the Red Bull and Everclear yourself, rather than purchasing a prepackaged mixture. (Also, no one is saying you can’t do that.)

    It is well-known that combining energy drinks and alcohol is particularly dangerous and stupid, but that shouldn’t absolve the producers of all responsibility. Nor should the state allow the next guy to put anti-freeze in a can and sell it as the next thing to get you even more fucked up.

  16. @ Ovidius: It sounded like you were defending Four Loko (and the rest that got banned), which you said was being scapegoated as a way to avoid dealing with date rape. Only date rape has nothing to do with the issue. The issue is alcohol poisoning. It is hardly scapegoating to blame the agent causing the alcohol poisoning, or the producers of that agent. It might be scapegoating if the legislature was blaming it for date rape but no one else brought that up, only you.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewbacca_def…

  17. @guspasho: I’d actually posit that the issue is alcohol-related malfeasance of all kinds on the part of over-imbibing college students and college-age drinkers.

    In addition to alcohol poisoning, one of the key drivers for the bans on this stuff is that the campus 7-11 sold out the night of the student “riot” in Eugene a couple months ago.

    What I’m saying here is that by banning these things one-by-one, you’re doing nothing to address the actual problem. You’re simply taking the current culprit off the shelves.

    It’s akin to locking up every crack dealer without doing anything to educate kids/teens/adults on the dangers an addictiveness of crack. You’re just taking one guy off the street rather than addressing the problems of crack use/abuse/addiction and the related behaviors.

  21. @eldepeche: After an exhaustive search for facts online I’ve determined that Four Loko is sold in 23.5 ounce cans, while a standard 750ml bottle of wine contains about 25 ounces. Four Loko’s strength varies by state, ranging from a low of 6% alcohol by volume in Indiana to a high of 12.5% in Ohio. Therefore a can of Four Loko, even in Cleveland, would NOT contain as much alcohol as a bottle of wine…unless that wine was some weak-ass shit.

    But it comes close.

    If we can just get these kids to STOP. To RESPECT THEMSELVES. To THINK ABOUT HOW THEIR ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES. We might be able to TURN THEM INTO UPSTANDING CITIZENS who swill three-buck chuck like us grownups do.

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