Poor Loko.

Just tried to type "memo" and actually typed "mofo" which is a pretty clear indication of how my life is going right now.  Law school is good until it keeps me from Harry Potter.  No midnight showing for me because of law school.  Once that happens I start yelling Unforgivable Curses in my head at my assignments and I wish I could actually make this memo writhe in pain: so worth the lifetime in Azkaban.  To sum up: I'M IN A RAGE!  This is the maddest I've ever been! (If you get this reference there is a monster high-five and a cookie waiting for you).  This is just some background for my everyone-never-talk-again post below.   

If I see one more post/article/tear-stained-face bemoaning the fact that everyone's favorite Bad Decision In A Can is gonna get nixed by that wet blanket, the FDA, I'm going to lose it.  People are complaining like a government agency banned fun, and the entire country has suddenly become that town from Footloose.

Unpopular/my opinion: it needed to be banned.

I've never been one for drinking in excess.  I didn't start drinking at all until my junior year of college, and to this day I've never been drunk.  I can't stand the feeling of losing control, and I don't feel safe when I've lost it, in any sense.  I don't mind being the designated driver, I can enjoy the occasional beer or gin and tonic, and I do not feel like my life has been compromised significantly because I don't get trashed.  So yes, I do realize I'm coming into this with an inherently biased opinion, as I have nothing I would lose if the fruity gasoline got yanked from shelves.  Hopefully you can look past this bias and see that I'm making sense anyway.  If not, oh well.  I'm aware I act like a 35-year-old and your being the 87th person telling me this fact ain't gonna do a damn thing.

I'ma break this down based on the arguments I've heard other people and the Loko lovelies themselves make for why lemonade-flavored tar should be sold.

1. Bars sell rum and cokes and vodka and Redbulls, and they aren't banned.
For one, Four Loko cuts out the middle man.  It's pre-mixed, so the company deliberately added caffeine to alcohol.  Two, have you watched the bartender make you a rum and coke?  (It's always a good call anyway if you can peek, so you know how much alcohol just went into the drink.)  You've got one, maybe two, tops, "drinks" in there, and about half of a can of Coke in that cup.  In a can of Four Loko, you've got 4 times the alcohol and probably about 8 times the caffeine.  Also a rum and coke has an actually decent chance of tasting good.  Same argument goes for Irish Coffee.  Three, saying that vodka and Redbulls exist is not a strong argument.  That drink is 'Roid Rage avec Deux Straws Petits and looks like battery acid made a baby with a 4-year-old Green Apple Jolly Rancher.  And that drink still has less caffeine and alcohol than a can of Four Loko.

2. The people who make Four Loko aren't making all these kids drink irresponsibly.  That's on them.
There is no way to drink this garbage responsibly.  The can it comes in is 23.5 ounces, and you can't reseal it.  Drink it down.  A fine wine or good beer may take a while for you to drink, because your tongue is enjoying it.  With Four Loko, your tongue is saying GET BEHIND ME, SATAN, so you swallow it as quickly as possible.  A product designed so you must drink a lot of it, and quickly?  Call me old-fashioned and take away my knitting needles, but back in MY day, we called that irresponsible drinking.  In this day, I'll also call it "a waste of money,"  "immature," "how dumb can you possibly be, seriously?" and "this can't possibly be enjoyable, can it? Don't lie." 

3. Their marketing is not dangerous: kids don't get fooled by a brightly-colored can.
Really?  You think this is the only issue?  How about the fact that it's malt liquor, and the statute of limitations on when it's legit to drink malt liquor expires within about 18 months of you being legally allowed to drink because that stuff is FOUL.  (Yes, I just made up that law.  Should be a real one.)  The whole can only costs a couple of dollars, and since we've already established that your taste buds are not part of the decision-making here, broke students are the only ones buying this liquefied Staten Island to get drunk.  

4. Caffeine's a stimulant and alcohol's a depressant, they, like, cancel each other out, right?
NO, NO, A THOUSAND TIMES NO.  Yeah, I was a bio major, but this is not even something that needs to get into detail.  This is also why drinking coffee will not sober you up to drive.  The only thing that makes you less drunk is time.  Don't be an idiot, seriously: if you're drunk, the only thing a stimulant will do to your system is convince your wasted brain that it's NOT drunk, it's FIIIINE.  Your motor skills are at the same terrible level they were at ten minutes ago, but now, instead of realizing that you couldn't fold a shirt if your future happiness depended on it, you think that you could fold a shirt so good that the creases could cut steel.  Yeah, funny, until you actually try to do something more dangerous.  Like walk.  Or drive.  Or DRINK MORE.  Yes, this happens.  You're really drunk and don't know it so you go after more alcohol.  Summary: they do NOT cancel each other out.  They build on each other like blowing up a planet with Doctor Device and lots of bad stuff happens.  

5. Lawls, we should just ban all alcohol then!  Since Prohibition worked SOOOO well LAWLZZZZ.
Shut up.  Seriously.  There are like a dozen fails in this argument.  The first is that this is a legitimate debate, and dropping sarcastic nuggets of facts-everyone-knows doesn't improve the debate: it just makes you look like a sassy high school junior who's probs in the top 15 in his class but is too cool to work harder, calls women "overly sensitive," and quotes Family Guy a lot and thinks he's really funny.  Yeah, I just generalized, and I'm doing it better than you do.
No one's trying to ban alcohol.  This is not a "slippery slope," since this is a really specific drink with really specific bad properties.  The Gambini Family will not start Four Loko speakeasies and whacking people over this "beverage."  They're just gonna take the caffeine out of the drink.  It's gonna be okay.
Also, to those saying kids will just find another way to get alcoholic energy drinks: I'm not so sure.  There are definitely people just drinking this to "see what happens" and not because they like it or drinks similar to it.  I think the extra effort will keep caffeine+alcohol out of lots of people's bodies.

 This is all I've got so far, but I may add to it.

If you're an offender of being a defender of this nationwide drink-choosing fail, do the world a favor and fight for something that matters.  Not only matters, but actually creates some kind of positive effect on anything, anywhere.  Like hating on memos with me. 

Bye, Loko.