Malt liquor beverages causing concern to officials

Joseph L. Cannon poured a Schlitz Malt Liquor into a clear plastic cup. A foamy head formed on the amber brew. 
Next, he poured blue-raspberry Four Loko and an orange Monster into separate cups. They fizzed slightly but didn't foam. 
Looking at Four Loko and Monster, "you can't tell the difference," said Cannon, a special agent for the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. 
Unless you drink it. 
Monster is a non-alcoholic energy drink, while Four Loko contains 12 percent alcohol by volume, along with sweeteners, caffeine, and other stimulants. That's twice the alcoholic content of the Schlitz Malt Liquor, even though both are considered malt beverages — beer — by state and federal alcohol regulators. 
And in a colorful, 23.5-ounce can, Four Loko packs in as much alcohol as about five normal 12-ounce beers. 
"This is an episode of binge drinking in a pop-top can," said Dr. J. Randy Koch, executive director of the Institute for Drug and Alcohol Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. 
Four Loko and other alcoholic-energy drinks have found an unwelcome national spotlight as a highly potent beverage of choice among college students, teenagers and anyone else looking for an inexpensive alcoholic buzz. Nine under-age students at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Wash., were hospitalized last month after drinking a combination of Four Loko, liquor and beer. 
While the company that makes Four Loko has complained of being singled out unfairly, the episode prompted Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna to renew a call for federal regulators to outlaw alcoholic-energy drinks as a threat to public health and safety. The Food and Drug Administration has been studying for a year whether it is safe to add caffeine to alcoholic beverages. 
Two of the country's biggest brewers, Anheuser-Busch Cos. and Miller Brewing Co., have pulled out of the market for alcoholic energy drinks, although Busch distributes the non-alcoholic Monster and a high-alcohol malt, Tilt, in three flavors. 
For state alcohol regulators, it's tough to define what they're trying to control. Four Loko, Joose, and other popular caffeinated brands are beer without the taste or look of beer. 
Like flavored malt beverages, the so-called "alco-pops" such as Mike's Hard Lemonade and Smirnoff Ice, the content of the alcoholic energy drinks is boosted by alcohol-based flavorings, forcing state and federal regulators to draw a line between a malt beverage and a distilled spirit. The line, now part of state law, is that no more than 1 1/2 percent of a beverage's alcohol volume can come from enhancements. 
Virginia has been has been sounding the alarm for two years about the potency of the alcoholic energy drinks, masked by the effects of caffeine, and the easy confusion with non-alcoholic energy drinks. 
"Anything that is attractive to young drinkers or binge drinkers is a problem, and this is kind of both," said W. Curtis Coleburn III, chief operating officer at ABC. "If you can put alcohol in a product that is sweet and fruit flavored, they're going to drink it, and they're going to drink more of it." 
That can lead to trouble, especially for young drinkers, legal age or not. Last month, the ABC Board suspended the beer and wine license of a Virginia Beach convenience store and fined it for selling three cans of Four Loko to a 16-year-boy last March. Less than three hours later, the boy was driving when his car crashed in Virginia Beach, killing a 16-year-old passenger. Testimony at the hearing showed the boys also had consumed shots of whiskey before the Four Loko. 
A study by the Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in 2007 found that college students who consumed alcohol mixed with energy drinks were twice as likely to get hurt, require medical attention and ride with an intoxicated driver than students who did not. Drinkers who combined alcohol and energy drinks were more than twice as likely to take sexual advantage of someone else, the study found, and almost twice as likely to be sexually taken advantage of. 
Those findings reinforce what Linda Hancock said she sees routinely at VCU, where she divides her time between directing the Wellness Resource Center and working as a nurse practitioner in the student health clinic. She is part of the Institute for Drug and Alcohol Studies, which involves 50 faculty from 10 different academic departments in research on substance abuse, as well as the Virginia College Alcohol Leadership Council. 
Hancock said she treated one young woman who had been raped after drinking two of the oversized alcoholic energy drinks. The girl had consumed almost twice as much alcohol as she thought she had, according to Hancock, who calls the drinks "a stealth product." 
It's also cheap, at about $2.50 for a 23.5-ounce can of Four Loko, making it popular not only with college students and other young people, but also street people, she said. 
"It gets more dangerous every year," Hancock said. 
Four Loko is made by Phusion Projects LLC, a Chicago company started five years ago by three Ohio State University graduates who said they got the idea from watching the mixing of liquor with energy drinks at bars. The company has defended its products and business practices since the Central Washington incident, stating that Four Loko is a caffeinated alcoholic beverage that contains less alcohol than an average rum and cola. 
"Our products are not energy drinks, as they've been called — and when consumed responsibility, they are just as safe as any other alcoholic beverages," the company said in a statement on its Web site addressing the incident. 
Phusion also said Four Loko containers are marked clearly with the alcohol content and a warning, "We ID," but critics say the products are marketed deceptively to look like the energy drinks that are popular with teenagers and young adults. The drink labels do not list contents and serving sizes because they are regulated by an arm of the Treasury Department, not the FDA. 
In Virginia, the General Assembly adopted a law last year that requires retailers with off-premises ABC licenses to place alcoholic energy drinks with beer and wine. The ABC Department is drafting regulations to ensure that the products aren't placed next to any non-alcoholic beverages. 
Del. G. Glenn Oder, R-Newport News, said he proposed the law at the request of the Virginia PTA, which gave him a distinguished service award in gratitude. He said the all of the energy-drink containers look the same to him. 
"You see these cans, without really looking couldn't tell you which ones had alcohol and which ones didn't," he said. 
Virginia beer wholesalers say they are working with retail outlets to make sure they comply with the law. Dennis P. Gallagher, president of the Virginia Beer Wholesalers Association, said the recent news coverage about "caffeinated alcoholic beverages . . . underscores the importance of the anticipated completion of a study by the FDA on these beverages." 
The FDA study is focusing on the combination of caffeine and alcohol, which the industry says is safe, but critics claim counteracts the normal sedative effect of alcohol. That's especially true with young drinkers, who already are less likely than adults to slow down as they drink more, according to Susie Bruce, director of the Center for Alcohol and Substance Education at the University of Virginia. 
"They actually can drink longer," she said. "They don't feel impaired, but they are impaired." 
Cannon, who works in ABC compliance, education, and training, said the state already is conducting undercover checks for sales of the alcoholic energy drinks to minors. ABC also is working on an education program that includes local law enforcement. 
"I think the police departments are even more in the dark than the licensees are in terms of just how to identify this," he said.