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If you’ve ever been to a party with people too hip to drink Mike’s Hard Lemonade but not nerdy enough to be a beer geek, you’ve no doubt drank Sparks. The energy drink not only supports Coors (”The Republican beer!”), it looks and tastes like somebody combined Red Bull and battery acid. That means teenagers drink it. It also contains alcohol, which does the same.
As such, the Center for Science in the Public Interest has sued Coors in an attempt to force Sparks off the market. CSPI cites cites a study (.pdf) that suggests caffeine impairs one’s ability to tell drunkenness; whether that’s true or not, good luck getting science to guide drug policy. (This is a hilarious drug policy joke, trust me.) The release goes on:
Sparks’ juvenile web site and guerilla [sic] marketing appeal to young consumers, according to CSPI. The web site offers a recipe for a drink called a “Lunchbox,” consisting of half Miller beer and half Sparks, and elsewhere, the site proposes consuming Sparks for breakfast alongside omelets. The company also hosts give-aways of Sparks at house parties, sponsors events unrelated to beer such as art shows, and engages in other unconventional marketing practices, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Oh, look, it’s all there: Unconventional marketing! A”Lunchbox”! Breakfast! Gorilla marketing! The Journal Sentinel, man! A full-fledged conspiracy to get kids to drink. Scoob, we gotta do something!
The group has already forced Budweiser to can its similar (but unsurprisingly worse) drinks. Unlike Tilt and Bud Extra, people actually drink Sparks, so it’s safe to say this suit will go nowhere. But let’s imagine a whistleblower comes around, with documents that say employees of the company that sells alcohol wanted people (even underage people!) to drink alcohol. We will be shocked, we will demand hearings, we will somehow be utterly surprised by all of this. And we will have hipsters who do more cocaine and teenagers who mix Red Bull with vodka and drink a lot more alcohol with a lot more caffeine in it. Well, maybe.
via Join Together
Photo of Ken (my apologies, man), Creative Commons license
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Nooooooooo! MillerCoors (their U.S. operations are combined) has announced it will 
