Caffeine Craze
Health officials are cracking down on the energy drink business for not properly warning their consumers
Before reaching for that Red Bull, you may want to think twice.
“The caffeine content of energy drinks varies over a 10-fold range, with some containing the equivalent of 14 cans of Coca-Cola, yet the caffeine amounts are often unlabeled and few include warnings about the potential health risks of caffeine intoxication,” says Roland Griffiths, Ph.D., one of the authors of the article that appears in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence this month.
According to researchers at John Hopkins University, Baltimore, it’s time for energy drink companies to own up to the potential dangers by requiring a label on the outer packaging. The label would warn the consumer of potential hazards from drinking caffeine, and would also indicate the caffeine levels in the beverage.
Energy drinks, which are primarily marketed to teens and young adults, present a serious health hazard, especially when looking at a 2008 study of 1,253 college students, which found that energy drink consumption significantly predicted subsequent non-medical prescription stimulant use, raising the concern that energy drinks might serve as a “gateway” to more serious abusive drugs.
In a 2007 survey of 496 college students, 51 percent of students reported consuming at least one energy drink during the last month. Of those 51 percent, 19 percent reported heart palpitations from drinking energy drinks.
Adding insult to potential injury, 27 percent of students surveyed admitted that they had mixed energy drinks with alcohol sometime in the last month. According to Griffiths, “Alcohol adds another level of danger because caffeine in high doses can give users a false sense of alertness that provides incentive to drive a car or in other ways put themselves in danger.”
Others see the consumption of energy drinks as a “gateway” to other more serious and harmful abusive drugs. It seems that energy drink marketers are capitalizing on this correlation by naming their products such things as “Blow” and “Cocaine.”
However, even without implications for additional harm, energy drinks present a significant danger. Caffeine intoxication itself is a recognized clinical syndrome, and can be noted by symptoms such as nervousness, anxiety, restlessness, insomnia, gastrointestinal upset, tremors, rapid heartbeats, psychomotor agitation, and in rare cases, death.
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