Keeping them awake so they can drink more...
Energy drinks with alcohol aimed at youthsThe images, culled from social networking sites, flashed on a screen: young people laughing, partying, clutching colorful cans of drinks with names like Sparks, Joose and Tilt.
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Energy drinks with alcohol are dangerous, they are targeted at young people and are hard to distinguish from their nonalcoholic counterparts, the speakers said at a conference Friday morning at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza.
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The drinks, with their sleek graphics, are referred to as a "speedball in a can," cost less than energy drinks without alcohol and are marketed on Web sites designed to appeal to young people, Ventura County Sheriff's Chief Deputy Geoff Dean told the audience.
"They are intentionally marketing these to a certain segment," Dean said.
Three cans of one of the beverages equals five shots of whiskey and contains the caffeine of 15 Diet Pepsi's, Dean said.
The stimulant of the energy drinks can mask how intoxicated a person is and prevent them from realizing how much alcohol they have consumed, according to Ventura County Limits. The stimulant effect can also make a person not realize they are drunk. Both energy drinks and alcohol cause dehydration.
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The Sheriff's Department was recently successful in getting one major grocery chain to separate alcohol energy drinks from nonalcoholic energy drinks.
Weird. Alcoholic beverages cost less than nonalcoholic beverages that they're trying to emulate?