State AG's band together, save drunks from being awake...

Via Consumerist, a number of state AG's have banded together to convince MillerCoors to drop caffeine from Sparks, an alcohol/energy drink. The claim is that it was marketed to underage drinkers.

Well, any drink that appeals to someone who is 21 is also going to appeal to someone who is 20. And while I've never had Sparks or any of it's ilk, it would have appealed to me when I drank more, because I'm the kind of person who gets sleepy after about two beers.

But the irony of this is that the ban probably makes it more likely that people will drink more, not less. Because one of the advantages of beer/malternatives is that the alcohol content is baked in. In the absence of Sparks, loyalists will go back to what they were drinking before - probably vodka and Red Bull. And they tend to be strong - bars tend to put a lot of vodka in them, because it's possibly the only mixed drink where the mixer actually costs more than the alcohol - Red Bull is over a buck a tiny can, way more expensive than rotgut rail vodka.

So Miller loses a profitable product, consumers miss out on buying something that they evidently wanted, and people are made no safer than before, and possibly less safe. Isn't government regulation great?