In defense of Four Loko

BY STEVE JANOSKI

It was about this time last year that one of my compatriots asked if I had ever heard of a drink called "Four Loko."

"This stuff is gonna' take off dude," he told me as he palmed the big purple can. "This Four Loko make you craaaazy!"

The drink he was referencing was an alcoholic drink that has malt liquor at its base but offers a heavy shot of caffeine along with it. While I liked the name, and the flashy packaging immediately attracted me, my days of drinking caffeine-laced alcohol ended before they began some years back when a friend of mine drank a six-pack of "BE" (the short-lived Budweiser energy drink) and severely drunk and very wired till dawn. I had also had numerous brutal encounters with malt liquor that taught me to stay away from such killers of the soul. But still, who knew this tall purple can would cause so much controversy?

As usual, we can blame the future of America: college kids. They have taken to Four Loko in droves (as they do with anything that has any remote chance of ending their young lives), and have killed the fun by drinking too much and slamming their cars into trees, oncoming cars, people, and anything else they're playing slalom with that night.

So a year later, and the Four Loko banner is pasted across the newspapers and TV screens as everyone from universities to the authorities are attempting to ban the drink, which they say is excessively dangerous because of the mixture of caffeine and alcohol. Unfortunately, what no one is talking about is the excessive stupidity that comes from being young and dumb, as that's what's truly to blame. I'm not going to cast stones because I've made more than my share of mistakes, but never once did I think to sue Jameson whiskey for my troubles—the stuff didn't drink itself.

Blaming Four Loko for the crashes and mishaps of drunken college students is like blaming Plaxico's gun instead of his trigger finger for the bullet hole in his leg. But a story from the Orlando Sentinel reports that for the second time in two weeks, lawsuits have been filed in Florida against the maker of Four Loko, Phusion Projects. One lawsuit, filed by a passenger who was severely injured in a mid-August car crash, alleges that the driver drank Four Loko the night of the accident. The passenger is now suing the driver, the convenience store where the drink was sold, and Phusion Projects for making it. The article also states that another Floridian is suing the company because his son spent the day drinking Four Loko before killing himself with a .22-caliber pistol.

Other high profile cases have abounded, and there's been no shortage of ambulance-chasing lawyers to take the suits to court on the behalf of distraught parents and relatives who are blaming a liquid for their sorrows instead of the person who committed the act.

Older folks often lament the rejection of personal responsibility in the young, but this beyond that; this is even worse than the people suing the cigarette companies as if the company put the smoke in their mouth every morning. Young people screw up, and if they're not screwing up because they're drinking too much Four Loko, they're screwing up because they drank too many Red Bull and vodkas. If it's not Red Bull and Vodkas, it's whiskey and cocaine. It's the nature of this beast— it likes to stumble around incoherently late at night and sleep on the lawn. Putting the blame on anything but the beast itself is distorting reality. These people need to own up to the fact that they're screwing up, and take the consequences for their actions. Doing any differently, which includes suing a company because of your misfortune, is cowardly.

Banning this drink might even lead to an upswing in drinking Irish coffees because the now-tweaking youth of America needs a jolt of caffeine with their liquor to get their buzz on with. But let me tell you, if they even considered banning Jameson because of it, these college kids are going to have a lot more problems on their hands than the trees they're hitting.