Energy Beers Get A Bad Rap

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What makes these prepackaged buzz bombs even more attractive to producers and retailers is that they’re still cheaper than spirits-based cocktails because they’re beer based. For arcane policy reasons, beer is taxed at a significantly lower federal rate than wine or spirits, and usually at a lower state rate as well. Drinks like Smirnoff Ice and Bacardi Silver are beer based, despite their liquor-brand nameplates, because of that tax differential.

That’s one of the things that put energy beers on the hit list of antialcohol groups like the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which recently announced its intent to sue A.B. and Miller over the drinks, charging that they are aimed at underage drinkers and contain more alcohol than standard beers. Similar organizations have agitated for taxing the drinks at the higher liquor rate and for banning any use of caffeine in alcohol beverages. Last year 29 state attorneys general sent a letter to A.B. that sharply criticized the company’s energy beers, including a 12 percent alcohol product called Spykes—packaged in 2-ounce bottles—that has since been withdrawn.

Even though caffeine-overdose deaths are very rare, assertions are being made that alcohol energy drinks suppress the effects of intoxication, leading young people to drink more than they would otherwise. These new drinks are deemed different and dangerous, because, they note, they’re “marketed to underage drinkers.”

I don’t think much of these drinks as beers, per se. As a category, they’re overly sweet, goopy with fruit flavors, and not much for pairing with food. Yet I also don’t see them as very different from Red Bull cocktails, coffee liqueurs, and Paul’s Old Grand-Dad and coffee. Still, at some point the question will come up whether the profits from this niche are worth the negative publicity they generate. Judging from the past, once these groups start beating the drums on a topic, they don’t give up.

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