Does This Controversial Product Mean Convenience for Mature Adults or Certain Disaster for Our Youth?
A year ago, stories hit the media about the inadvertent approval of a new powdered alcohol product, Palcohol. The Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau announced the approval of this product and then retracted it immediately, saying the approval had been an error. We covered this story in an earlier article about Palcohol.
Palcohol is the brainchild of a businessman named Mark Phillips who claimed that his motivation was that he wanted to take a refreshing alcoholic beverage on hikes and kayaking trips without needing to lug bottles of booze. He hired scientists to work out a manufacturing method of powdering alcohol so it can be sold in resealable packets.
This new product, even though it was as yet unapproved, caught the attention of many legislators. In state after state, legislation began to be introduced to ban the product from sales in their state.
States that have banned the product: Alaska, Delaware, Louisiana, South Carolina, Vermont, Utah
Considering or pending legislation: Texas, Massachusetts, Maryland, Minnesota, Ohio, New York, Colorado, Michigan, Wisconsin. Nebraska has also expressed concerns.
The Palcohol company’s home page now attempts to counter the arguments used by states passing and considering these bans. But their arguments seem to amount to shaming and even contradict themselves. As in these two claims on the home page:
Benefit statement for Palcohol: ”Moderate quantities of flavored Palcohol products…are a fraction of the weight and bulk associated with traditional liquor packaging.”
Argument that people will NOT try to smuggle Palcohol into events: “The volume of a shot of powdered alcohol is 4X greater than the volume of a shot of liquid alcohol so liquid alcohol is much easier to conceal.”
Concerns about Youth Consumption of Alcohol
Mr. Phillips denies that the sale of Palcohol could lead to any increase in alcohol consumption by young people because it will not be sold to anyone under 21. But all the laws in the world have not kept alcohol out of the hands of our youth. And since each person creates their own alcoholic drink by mixing this powder with water, they can make it any strength they want to.
A member of the Michigan Council on Alcohol Problems described the potential problem with this product this way: “It’s like Kool Aid for kids at this point; they just mix it with water and it’s the next binge-drinking thing.”
Young people do love novelty. We could well imagine that an underage drinker who’s already hiding his habit from his parents could thrill in fooling them – and his school or any other authority – with his new ability to conceal Palcohol around the home or secretly take it to events.
In the next few months, we should see how many more states adopt legislation to ban this product and how many embrace it. It could be another couple of years before we learn what harm this product actually does when it’s on the market.
Alcohol poisoning is already enough of a problem, but how much easier will be to reach a fatal limit with this stuff?
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/04/21/305637545/powdered-liquor-now-legal-but-won-t-be-in-your-margarita-soon
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/03/12/just-add-water-here-comes-powdered-alcohol/
