ALCOHOL AND CAFFEINE Caffeinated Alcohol Beverages: A Public Health Concern

Abstract — Consumption of alcohol mixed with caffeinated energy drinks is becoming popular, and the number of pre-mixed caf-feinated alcohol products on the worldwide market is increasing. There is public health concern and even occasional legal restriction relating to these drinks, due to associations with increased intoxication and harms. The precise nature and degree of the pharmaco-logical relationship between caffeine and alcohol is not yet elucidated, but it is proposed that caffeine attenuates the sedative effects of alcohol intoxication while leaving motor and cognitive impairment unaffected. This creates a potentially precarious scenario for users who may underestimate their level of intoxication and impairment. While legislation in some countries has restricted production or marketing of pre-mixed products, many individuals mix their own energy drink-alcohol ‘cocktails’. Wider dissemination of the risks might help balance marketing strategies that over-emphasize putative positive effects. A paper in the current issue of Alcohol and Alcoholism iden-tifies a trend for high levels of consumption of caffeinated alcohol drinks in Asian manual workers (Cheng et al., 2012). The authors state that these drinks are marketed as medicinal products that offset fatigue, and that a significant number of consumers use the drinks before or during work. This development of the functional use of caffeine/alcoho