Article URL: https://www.theexamination.org/articles/red-bull-funded-research-energy-drinks-alcohol Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49124738 Points: 47 # Comment…

This story, co-published by STAT, is part of the Behind the Buzz project, an investigative collaboration involving The Examination, The Bristol Cable, Daraj, Investico, Paper Trail Media, Der Spiegel, Der Standard and the Toronto Star. On a winter morning in a Long Island town about two hours east of New York City’s skyscrapers, a Dutch researcher told local officials that their concerns about mixing heavily caffeinated energy drinks with alcohol were overblown. A few months earlier, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had effectively banned Four Loko, a caffeinated malt liquor dubbed “blackout in a can” by college students. Suburban Suffolk County was now considering something more sweeping: a ban on selling energy drinks to minors. Joris Verster, an academic from Utrecht University, said there was no scientific basis for the law. Though booze and energy drinks are often consumed together, Verster argued that beverages like Red Bull aren’t to blame for bad things that happen when people get drunk. He offered an analogy that might resonate with locals; Suffolk County includes the beach towns that inspired the thriller “Jaws.” Blaming energy drinks for binge drinking and alcohol-fueled injuries, he said, would be like blaming shark attacks on summertime ice cream sales. “The shark attacks are not caused by the ice cream sales,” Verster said in the February 2011 hearing. He was one of three scientists who had crossed the Atlantic to urge officials to drop the proposal. The others were a British professor and Red Bull’s chief scientific officer. The trio shared more than a research interest: Through paychecks or research grants, all three had gotten money from Red Bull, the world’s largest energy drink company. Their argument won the day. Lawmakers dropped the age limit, marking an early victory for the Austria-based company in what would become a global campaign to use science to combat restrictions on its products.