this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2023
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United States | News & Politics
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"Hard lemonade could mean anything."
They have signs up listing how much caffeine is in them, which by the way, isn't legally mandated. The only requirement the FDA has on caffeine labeling is that it's listed as an ingredient. That's it. The amount of caffeine doesn't have to be disclosed.
So if the amount of caffeine is known, what more do they need to do before it becomes the consumer's responsibility? Your argument is that it's dangerous, but alcohol is much more dangerous than what is known from the surgeon General warning, and its dangerous to those not consuming it as well.
You can't treat it different because of the novelty of the item, in which case maybe the FDA needs to mandate all drugs to have warning labels, not just OTC and alcohol.
No, hard lemonade means it has alcohol in it, like hard cider. When packaged beverages are sold with alcohol in America, it’s required to list how much alcohol is in it. Wine does this, beer does this. If someone told me they were giving me “hard pineapple juice” the first thing I would ask is if it had alcohol in it, because that’s what that combination of words means in the context of fruit beverages.
I can expect “sweet plorbus” to have sugar in it and to avoid it if I’m diabetic and watching my intake. Words mean stuff. “Charged” doesn’t mean anything in the context of drinks. Charged with what, electrolytes? Do plants crave it?
Putting an unknown energy drink on a fountain is stupid if you don’t warn people. This is the same case. I also don’t expect fountain drinks to contain peanuts. I don’t think there’s any specific signage required to sell drinks on a fountain that could cause peanut allergies, but companies would avoid doing that due to obvious reasons (plus I can’t imagine it would taste good?). Lemons don’t have caffeine in them naturally.
The fact that the FDA isn’t regulating this signage is IMHO a failure of the FDA. IMHO Starbucks should be liable for serving drinks with unexpected amounts of caffeine in it. We need to stop forgiving companies when they hurt people just because the government didn’t hold their hands hard enough.