FDA May Make Irish Coffee Illegal

ONE MORE FINE REASON TO LOATHE BUREAUCRACY: Caffeinated alcoholic drinks targeted by Feds.

Stating that caffein masks the intoxicating effect of alcohol, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently notified some 30-odd manufacturers of caffeinated alcoholic drinks that their wares may be illegal, and that it intends to review “questionable” beverages and may prohibit them altogether. This follows the concerns of 18 state attorneys general—including California’s—that notified the FDA of why they consider such drinks dangerous. The attorneys general were joined by a number of doctors, scientists and others who have conducted research on such drinks and concluded that alcohol and caffein are a bad idea.
The learned researchers cited studies that claim caffein masks drunkenness and could lead to “increased risk taking...and increased violence, sexual assault, traffic accidents and even suicide.” They also claim that the drinks contribute to binge drinking, and that college students are particularly prone to heavy, episodic bouts of weekly drunkenness. They allege that people who drink caffeinated alcoholic beverages are more likely to have alcohol-related problems....yadda, yadda, yadda.
What’s really going on with the states and the FDA is that governments generally want to bring back Prohibition by degrees, and this is another step  in the more repressive, big-brother state that our elected officials  want to impose. While nobody wants to see underage youth get plastered easily, and that yes, there are limits to how smart it is to blend caffein and alcohol, the heavy-handed approach by government is indicative of the kind of problem that we the people need to solve if we want to flatter ourselves with the notion that we have some kind of freedom in our lives and aren't merely the inmates of a bunch of omnipowerful baby sitters in an asylum of their making.
What makes FDA’s actions so blatantly idiotic is that it’s obvious that none of them have ever had an Irish Coffee or one of its derivative drinks that have been a staple of bars, cafés and coffeehouses for generations.
 FDA doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on when it comes to relating alcohol-caffein drinks and problem drinking, either. Drunks drink alcohol to get drunk. They don’t usually cut their tipple with caffein because that would be pointless. While some unenlightened folk might think that caffein and alchohol will cancel each other out, experience soon shows otherwise; if it didn’t, caffein-booze blended drinks would be a lot more popular in the culture. What these kinds of drinks are is an alternative, a taste combination like any other that has a following. Perhaps because those drinks have a following, FDA thinks it needs to butt in where it need not go, much the way a killjoy can’t stand the thought of someone being happy—and seeks to put an end that happiness.
Should FDA go through with its threat to kill this class of beverage, it will make it impossible to buy or blend an Irish Coffee at any hospitality business again. It will class Irish coffee the same as a Schedule 1 drug: something that cannot be had legally in the United States, period.
Justification for this comes from FDA’s own language and circular logic—according to them, “food additives require premarket approval based on data demonstrating safety submitted to the agency” in other words, the makers of any caffein-added alcohol beverage have to get prior approval before they can sell their wares. Besides that, anything can be an “ingredient” and ingredients added to food are considered unsafe from the beginning unless FDA approves their use in advance or such ingredients are “generally recognized as safe.”
Adding booze to coffee goes back hundreds of years and was around long before FDA arrogated the power to itself to disapprove caffeinated alcoholic beverages or decide if they’re “safe”.
 Are other alcohol-caffein combination beverages “safe”? Might as well ask if water is safe; drink too much of it and you’ll drown. The question ought to be whether FDA—or any other government agency at state or fed levels—ought to have the blanket power to change your menu preferences permanently, without review. The answer to that question is no.
Look for their answer to this tempest in a teacup in time you thwart your enjoyment of the Christmas holidays.