Four Loko Es No Joko

Four Loko was a wildly popular alcoholic beverage that swept college campuses in 2005 before it was finally banned in 2010.  Four Loko was named for the four main ingredients that are in it: alcohol, caffeine, taurine, and guarana.  All of these ingredients are equivalent to about three beers, a can of Red Bull and a large expresso.  To most this insane concoction sounds excessive and dangerous, but to teenagers and young adults it is the most popular alcoholic beverage of choice.  The existence of this drink proves that our society, especially young adults, cannot be just satisfied with being drunk.  Four Loko is loaded with both caffeine and alcohol which, when mixed together, make the consumer extremely drunk and energetic at the same time.  We cannot solely be satisfied with being drunk, but we need to be energized at the same time.

Phusion Products (the company that sells (Four Loko along with two other similar alcoholic beverages) did not seem to ever need to promote and advertise Four Loko.  Four Lokos (or Four as they are sometimes called) seemed to market themselves by word of mouth from college to college.  The drink is extremely cheap, costing around $4 for the can. It also does not need to be mixed with a "mixer" or poured into a cup because it comes in its own can.  Most importantly, one can of Four Loko can get a person extremely drunk and energetic for the entire night. It is simply an inexpensive and convenient way for college kids to get drunk.  I say it is for college kids because adults would probably never drink Four Lokos because they taste terrible and can get the consumer very, very intoxicated.

I personally have drank a can of Four Loko only once.  This is because I did not enjoy the taste or actual drunk I got from it.  The kind of drunken state the drink puts you in a a hazy, almost dream-like state.  Usually when one gets drunk they have a monumental high and then they crash later.  With Four Loko the consumer never gets a low because of its caffeine content.  This can obviously become dangerous because not only is caffeine and alcohol a scary combination, but also the energy one gets from it discourages them from sleeping off their drunken state.  Four Loko was obviously banned for its health concerns and the company suffered a lot of backlash because of the product.  This is why the website for Four Loko, www.drinkfour.com, has warnings and responsibilities posted all over it.  

Four Loko ultimately perfectly fits in with the common generalization about American consumers that too much is never enough.  Four Loko drinks exist because no longer did we just want to get drunk, we wanted to get drunk and energized at the same time.  And although Four Loko is obviously bad and tastes awful, it was the forth most popular alcoholic beverage at 7-Eleven stores in 2009.  Phusion Products knew that Americans would not care about the bad taste or dangers of the drink because their main target market, teenagers, just wanted an inexpensive way to get "hammered" and hyper at the same time.  And the makers of Four Lokos were right because for the five years the drink existed in the United States it was the most sought-after alcoholic beverage for almost all young adults.

Sources:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/campus-overload/2010/11/drinking_one_four_loko_is_like.html

http://www.drinkfour.com/#

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_(energy_drink)