this wouldn’t have saved me, i was already driving when i started to get fucked up on [discontinued brand] at school
better thing to do would be to not make teenagers get up in the morning
Seriously they should, it would be better for them. They dont because sports and extra curricular come after 3 PM (if they start later that all starts later too) and also cause it fits parents’ work schedules. Except theyre teens, they hopefully should be able to be trusted to be more independent and go to school by 10 AM.
Ah but that would send the dangerous message to the proles that they have some right to sleep in for health which might carry over into adulthood as demands for flexible work hours to suit human bodies and lifestyles!
Better to beat them down as children, regiment them, abuse them, force them to take drugs and get used to it early so it’s seen as normal and part of “growing up”
(And as a bonus it generates demand for our caffeine drug market further taking money from their pockets and adding another cost they have to bear just to earn a living)I just keep thinking of the dead teens graves that should be marked “died while driving exhausted, so we could keep school schedules aligned for maximum profit generation”
The phrase “maximum profit generation” is now sticking in my head like a concept: that is what it will be to whatever comes after the Alphas or whatever the fuck they’re up to now. Betas? Ligmas?
Regardless, the last generation raised under late capitalism before it either rises to socialism or submerges into barbarism will truly be the Maximum Profit Generation.
treatlerites reeling. “socialists” crying about paternalism and manifesting thatcher when they - who are evidently children- aren’t allowed to have unlimited access to their highly processed bright green ooze.
are you being sarcastic? this is war on drugs and oppression of children, im sorry that it’s unappetizing to you, its still a systemic injustice. banning drugs isn’t an effective way to reduce their harm on society, and this is being done out of the belief that children are subhuman
I think 10 year olds shouldn’t have unlimited unsupervised access to drugs and that makes me a puritan and oppressor of children now
strawman. i never called anyone a puritan, and you’re being overdramatic by personally labeling yourself as an oppressor rather than just someone who passively condones oppression. if you want to talk about other drugs we can do that (i’m about to reply to someone else who mentioned cocaine), but right now we’re talking about caffeine. caffeine is safer to use than most other drugs, there’s no clearly demonstrable reason why kids shouldn’t be taking it. nobody was ever talking about “limits” or “supervision” afaik, and that’s actually one of my biggest issues with outright banning it. if teenagers are consuming caffeine out in the open and openly discussing it, there’s ample opportunity for peers as well as responsible adults to notice and intervene with bad habits, they have support and can talk about how to do this healthily. if you ban it, they’re going to hide it so it’ll be a lot harder to reach out and help them if they’re having issues, and they’ll feel like they’re inherently doing something they’re not supposed to be doing, so they’ll be less concerned about looking out for themselves, and they’ll have less access to information about using it safely. remember that kids are forced into an inhumane schedule of sleep deprivation and pointless work, and especially for undiagnosed/unmedicated adhd or possibly other neurodivergence, caffeine can be just as important to their functioning as it is for many adults. how much can we ask of them?
Don’t forget your belief that children are subhuman. An important aspect of being human is legally guaranteed unlimited access to the self-kill juice no matter your circumstances nor development.
an important aspect of being human is having a reasonable degree of autonomy, for people to respect the decisions you make for yourself. can you try saying anything that’s not a strawman?
Following this argument to its logical extreme, why have age of consent laws? Why not let 10 year olds drive? Why not let kids apply for credit cards so they can accrue thousands in debt for Fortnite skins?
As a society we have accepted that children are not developmentally ready for many things. I don’t see why this is any different.
Did I drink booze underage? Of course, like millions of kids. But it was mainly at house parties and whatnot. I think drinking at house parties with a bunch of age appropriate people was probably a (relatively) safer environment to get introduced to alcohol than hanging around in bars at 15. A bit of a tangent but just a concrete example from my life of how even when being broken these kinds of laws might reduce harm.
oppression of children
lmao
yes, taking legal rights away from a group of people based on vibes is oppression. just because they can’t fight back doesn’t mean you can just do whatever you want to them. plenty of kids can use energy drinks in a healthy way and plenty of adults can’t. as an adult, i see absolutely no reason why i’m more qualified to buy energy drinks than anyone else. it comes down to a complete lack of empathy, you forget what it was like to be subject to every adult’s whims and never have your protests taken seriously, knowing you’ll never have to deal with it again.
as an adult, i see absolutely no reason why i’m more qualified to buy energy drinks than anyone else.
The reason is cognitive development, especially before the age of 16, the same reason kids aren’t tried as adults in a court of law.
plenty of kids can use energy drinks in a healthy way and plenty of adults can’t.
The main reason people drink energy drinks in the first place is to stay awake longer, which is already unhealthy on its own. Usually this is tied to severe overwork or extreme study sessions, making it even more unhealthy.
my big developed grownup brain told me to drink like five cans a day because its yummy. (this was a short period where i tried them, i’m not using caffeine nowadays for the record.) the brain development argument is a reflexive excuse for claiming that the worst adult is better and more deserving than the best child, it just doesn’t translate to reality 99% of the time. i don’t see how the second paragraph is relevant at all. you have not proven that caffeine is inherently unhealthy, nobody has. and if it was, why are only kids being targeted? if kids feel a need to stay awake longer and overwork themselves, you should focus on fixing that rather than taking away the drug that makes it bearable for them. why are we expecting something from kids that we don’t expect from adults?
Usually this is tied to severe overwork or extreme study sessions, making it even more unhealthy
these are unaddressed by restrictions on caffeine consumption of course
This is the weirdest upvoted take on Hexbear I have ever seen.
There’s a huge difference between imprisoning people for taking a drug, and banning the sale of goods to children.
But never mind, I agree, legalise the direct sale of cocaine to children now!
under 16 year olds shouldnt have any reason to be consuming stimulants but they clearly are, instead of the state intervening in why they do that theyre just throwing the book at one sensationalized product group.
literally 0 cafeine or sugar addicts will be stopped, because neither is actually being blocked, just an arbitrary combination of the two.
just because you believe in the utility of state bans on products you shouldn’t credulously entertain the worst incarnations of these coming from the worst governments on earth. the UK government is starving children with austerity but sure, this is about children’s health and not a bone to tabloid readers
Not to entirely defend that take. But the authorial family structure/upbringing as a result of patriarchy is something a lot marxist spoke out against.
cocaine ruins your life and caffeine doesn’t. if a kid is regularly using caffeine, it’s entirely possible that they’re completely healthy and well-adjusted. if a kid is regularly using cocaine, they likely have major underlying issues that need to be addressed. kids have way way less desire to use cocaine than caffeine. there is a huge difference between imprisoning people and banning the sale, but you still have the same fundamental issue that you cannot ban a drug, you can only hurt and stigmatize the users to varying degrees.
Hard disagree that this will hurt and stigmatise children to any degree. Are children stigmatised because they can’t vote or drive?
Letting kids sleep in a couple more hours in the morning before school would help them more than giving them unlimited access to gamer juice.
im feeling a lot of personal animosity towards you so im disengaging from this argument
In a vaccuume, this is a good policy choice. In the context of English politics, this is something of a mistake. Living standards are in decline, more and more pensioners are freezing to death each winter, and the capitalists and blue-bloods are needling for any opportunity to privatize the NHS. If Labour actually lived up to their name (or at least were just cynically savvy), this ban would come alongside a package to actually work on and improve these problems.
Instead, it’s just gonna be perceived as an austerity government doing a little bit of nanny state policy on the side, just because they can. Torries will use it as a rally cry, like the big-gulp soda thing in New York was, and most people will remember this as Labour electing to tinker at the margins rather than actually govern to anyone’s benefit.
To be clear, this is a good policy. But it’s a good policy being done in the most self-sabotaged manner possible.
They cant stop kids from vaping, this ban isn’t worth shit.
manifesting thatcher when they - who are evidently children
I get it now, anyone who might think a blanket ban might backfire instead of something like more stringent warnings on packaging clearly has to be a child living in the UK because nobody else could possibly care about a growing trend of “think of the children” bans, right?
For reference, I’m not saying that energy drinks shouldn’t have more regulation, as in the case of the death of a college student from Panera’s Charged Lemonade. I think warnings on any drinks with significant amounts of caffeine or other stimulants would honestly be a good idea. As an adult, I’ve been jittery and miserable twelve hours later from just one 120mg coffee in a can because I drank it while dehydrated and didn’t drink any water after that.
I am ardently against bans like this and want way more radical solutions like banning in advertising (blanket, but I’d settle for “junk foods”), plain packaging and regulations on making products visually appealing, limits on sweetness to hide chemical bitterness outside of pharmaceuticals, nutritional infor clearly communicated more prominently than branding.
Distracting paternalism is useless at best and harmful at worst. These things are brightly coloured, have edgy fonts and names, and are disgustingly sweet because that works. Hit the corporate ghouls in the money where it hurts, don’t blame teenagers for wanting to consume the drug that makes managing their life easier when it’s packaged so attractively and sold everywhere.
I don’t know what the right answer is, or whether or not those proposals would be effective, but I think we can both agree bans like this for cheap political points are actively unproductive to solving the actual problem.
I see so many freaks down like 3-4 of these a day. Schools honestly need to create some curriculum for health Ed about acceptable caffeine limits
It’s never been so easy to slowly kill yourself lmao
It’s never been so easy to slowly kill yourself lmao
how many people are dying of cafeine
About 10 per year but those are usually accidental crazy amounts. More talking about the stress on your heart. Adds up if your drinking this shit like crazy
Can’t die to caffeine if something else gets ya first. Checkmate. sips energy drink
does it add up though
Yeah your right drinking more then the recommended caffeine limit frequently has no adverse health effects
Sorry I’m a dumbass
you specifically made a claim around long term heart health. i didn’t find a very definite conclusion on that, and you haven’t produced one.
recommended doseages are just as much (arguably more) about short-term effects, i don’t know why you’d assume they’re predictive of long term health outcomes unless this is clearly documented somewhere.
for all i know the recommended dose for caffeine is designed around when 50% of test subjects get jittery
I’ve never seen any evidence of cumulative heart damage from excessive caffeine useage.
It can, in conjunction with other things, bring you into problem territory. Like if you have a heart problem, or go exercise, you can induce tachycardia or worst case a heart attack.
But if long term caffeine usage causes heart damage the effect is drowned out by more significant factors like not doing exercise or not eating a plant based diet.
If youre constantly raising your blood pressure to high levels overtime your heart has to work more.
Your heart doesn’t just tank a super dose of caffeine forever with out it wearing down
https://www.acc.org/Latest-in-Cardiology/Articles/2024/08/14/16/39/Chronic-High-Caffeine-Consumption-Impacts-Heart-Rate-BP (feel free to tear this study apart I’m a dumb American so I don’t know what’s good research or not)
While it seems you typically grow a partial tolerance with constant caffeine consumption which avoids the blood pressure spike ie with moderate caffeine consumption. Anything higher you start to get into moderate overdose territory which can bring back blood pressure spiking and other symptoms.
I’m sure sugar is doing most of the damage but caffeine is contributing as well.
I just want to emphasize that I don’t think caffeine is evil or nothing just that you probably shouldn’t be drinking 600-800 mgs of it
here’s the meta analysis that decided 400mg. they also found studies drawing a link but also many that didn’t. it’s by no means a closed question, and i suspect that even if it started to lean towards danger, it would be way less of a risk than other common products (cured meat)
I just want to emphasize that I don’t think caffeine is evil or nothing
i don’t think it’s good, it personally has a vendetta against me. but i don’t think western governments should be expanding surveillance against kids, especially governments who are on the other hand starving them with cuts to food assistance
This study shows that exercising when full of caffeine (like 10x a cup of coffee) your heartrate takes a bit longer to go back to normal.
Which isn’t good, but a bit of a nothingburger.
If concerned about heart health exercise for around 1.5 hours each week vigourously, avoid alcohol, avoid meat, and avoid stress.
“slowly kill yourself” obviously means damage to the body, which is well supported, e.g.
These drinks have like 25-50 grams of sugar per serve. Caffeine might not kill ya but diabetes sure can.
They make sugar free energy drinks
Sugar substitutes still fuck up the insulin response over the long term, unfortunately
Worse than soda (Which they can buy)?
No, I wouldn’t think so - it’s quite hard to design a robust study around that though
If there were proper controls on sweetening packaged drinks you’d expect total consumption to decrease significantly - the level of sugar or sugar substitutes is only palatable because people’s tastes have adapted in a way that would rarely, if ever, occur if people just had access to a spoon and a bag of sugar
There’s like a hundred years of food science devoted to figuring out how to maximise sugar and fat in products without making them taste disgusting
then surely it’d be a ban on sugar beverages, not ‘energy drinks’
One monster is 150 mg and the daily recommended limit or w/e they call it is like 350 i think so you could have like 2 and a small redbull before you start entering unadvisable territory
this is not health advice
150+150 = 300 red bull only has 50mg? somebody is getting scammed
i mean redbull has like 80 but hey whats another 30 mg over the limit surely it cant hurt
My friend in high school almost had a heart attack because he drank too many. But then he just kept drinking like it’s nothing
i went through like a two week phase with various caffeinated drinks recently and was really surprised by how hard it was to find the dose of caffeine i was consuming. maybe im stupid but it took me >30s for most of them. people should never be taking any drug without knowing the exact dose, prominently displaying it should be legally required and also just common sense. (maybe a small part of the problem though)
here it’s just on the can
oi
ye got a loicense fer dat red bull?
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i bet this is gonna make energy drinks so much cooler for kids and eliminate any conversation about how to consume them in a healthy way, they’ll chug five in their room before school instead of doing it in the open
This is not a law against children drinking energy drinks, this is a law against stores selling them to children.
i don’t see the relevance. does the fact that kids need a plug make it any better? being applied inconsistently and unpredictably couldn’t make a regulation work better imo
How can it not be relevant? One law penalises and criminalises people for consuming a harmful drug, i.e. the victims. The other penalises the people gleefully selling them the harmful drug. These parties are not equally liable for the damage done. There is no incentive to ‘chug five in their room’.
Alcohol laws work the same way in many places
good idea, bad timing. (also better idea to regulate their contents, say for kids caffeine/taurine lower than x, but whatever)
(sleepy kids bought straight caffeine from pharmacies anyway, but like there is something to be said about moderation)
I once hung out with some dude bros who brought a big sack of caffeine powder around with them. They would rail it almost constantly. No idea if that’s actually effective I think they would’ve been happier with coke lmao
Wtf.
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D:
It has already happened in Norway. Some stores, like Meny, requires ID for anyone under 14. Everyone else have to scan their fingerprints at the self-checkout.
that sounds obnoxious, never met a fingerprint scanner that wasn’t finicky as hell
like, if you’re gonna do it, then scan the barcode on my driver’s license like a real surveillance state, not the stage-play stuff you see in movies
The issue is that those 14 and under just get older friends to buy energy drinks for them. Thats how it was done when I was a kid (with alcohol & weed in my case)
I mean yeah, there’s no such thing as an absolute law. If the goal is to make 100% sure absolutely no kid or teenager ever gets so much as a drop of Redbull® (or even alcohol), then your policy is always doomed to failure, no matter how strict you make it.
Luckily, you don’t actually have to do that. Some minor barrier to entry, even one as simple as having to ask “hey, could you get me this from the shop?”, is usually enough to discourage a pretty sizable chunk of people. Like China’s firewall. Doesn’t actually stop anyone determined, but it is enough to keep yer nan from using Facebook to fry her understanding of the world. Assuming yer nan lived in China.
I know a lot of people who chug this stuff like it’s water. I don’t know how they do it.
They won’t for much longer =\
Regardless of how healthy energy drinks are for under 16s (or anyone, really), this is a fairly short sighted decision if the plan is to allow 16 year olds to vote in the hopes they’ll save Labour lmao
I fucking detest energy drinks but any bill that bans them and not freely traded caffeine powder and or bills is going to be worthless
Yeah, I’ve heard awful stories of people bulk buying caffeine powder off the internet and then straight up taking a lethal overdose
No way you just reminded me of the caffeine pill very special episode of Saved By The Bell
i’m so excited
In an old special, Eddie Izzard tells the joke: “No smoking in bars anymore, and soon, no drinking and no talking.”
I used to think that was a funny joke, but I guess it was just an accurate prediction of England’s future.
The sugar is the worst shit about these. One can of V is like a fistful.
This is puritanic cringey bullshit. Banning stuff is pointless, governments would be better served enforcing plain packaging, limits on sugar before something has to be prominently labelled as confectione, sold in a separate section with %of daily energy and sugar larger than the brand name or something,
The sugar is not the worst shit about energy drinks. Excessive caffeine and other random shit is the main concern, which is associated with sleep problems, anxiety, depression and suicidality in teens.
Most energy drinks rely heavily on sweeteners anyway (and those are their own bag of awful diabetes inducing shit). Because sugar in drinks is heavily taxed.
Excessive caffeine and other random shit is the main concern, which is associated with sleep problems, anxiety, depression and suicidality in teens.
You’re going to have to clarify your claims here. Caffeine intake can effect sleep yes, but teenagers have ridiculous sleep patterns anyway. Early wakeups from school also negatively affect teenage sleep patterns, so does electronic usage close to bed, a lack of exercise, excessive salt consumption, stress etc. If we are making the claim that caffeine is the best place to have an intervention here you’re going to have to back that up (and differentiate from people consuming caffeine because their sleep is fucked up).
Same with suicide et al. Are you saying caffeine causes suicide? or is likely to? That is a very strong claim. Caffeine certainly makes people jittery, people with anxiety might benefit from avoiding it. Are you making a causative claim here? or that products which are harmful to some teenagers should be banned? or what?
edit: forgot the UK did a sugar tax. Almost a good policy there, except regressive taxation kinda blows.
I’m not sure what there is to clarify. We don’t and never could have causational studies because jamming kids full of caffeine is kind of unethical, but yes, there are studies showing correlation between caffeine intake in teens and suicidality. And I think trying to reduce energy drink consumption as part of effort to reduce that likely harm is a good move, yes.
FWIW -
People self-medicating with things that are easily available is incredibly common. That’s a major reason for why people pick up smoking as a habit: people try it and most people bounce off it, but for some people it (poorly) medicates some undiagnosed or untreated mental health problem so they start using it until they’re also chemically addicted to nicotine and have firmly connected consuming nicotine with feeling less bad in their brains. With that understanding, how is it not abundantly clear that there’s going to be a correlation between consuming easily available, unregulated stimulants and things that are comorbidities with ADHD or are otherwise at least partially alleviated by even a mild stimulant like caffeine?
You can do longitudonal studies but it’s very hard. You can also withdrawal caffeine and see if people get better. It is irresponsible to make sweeping policy changes on correlations alone. Consider, basically everyone with schizophrenia smokes, smoking doesn’t cause schizophrenia. People are solving some problem, even if not in the best way. Withdrawing the drug without offering some other treatment is likely counterproductive.
If people felt shit and didn’t sleep much or slept too much (both defining symptoms of depression) I would absolutely expect them to reach for a stimulant to help them. I would not also necessarily expect removing the stimulant to help.
Also kids with unmedicated adhd often overuse the shit out of caffeine because they can’t function otherwise. Undiagnosed adhd is significant cause of depression and anxiety.
%of daily energy and sugar larger than the brand name or something,
i hate to say it but a Repo Man can with “400% DAILY VALUE” printed on it would draw me like a moth to a flame
Some people are beyond help, but lots of people make good choices when given good info.
You can also make packaging aversive colours
I mean, name the color and I’ll tell you the Monster flavor.
They already are lol, this is just another nothing burger from the Labour Party.
They’re not. But some stores have a policy to not sell drinks to under-16s, this is just making it into an actual legal requirement.
