Never underestimate the power of uninformed people in large numbers.

To what, you may inquire, am I referring? Well, in this instance it is focused on the terror-inducing effects the beverage Four Loko, and a few other like beverages, have brought to campuses and communities across this nation.

I’ll come right out and say that I am not defending the drink itself; it tastes pretty bad, lacks in health value and is dangerous if consumed too quickly and in high quantities — but then, alcohol is rarely a healthy item, and binge drinking is obviously deadly.

What I am angry about are the scare tactics used to create this supposed ban. First, look to some of the recent deaths and hospitalizations attributed by the media to Four Loko.

A Florida family attempted to file a lawsuit against Phusion Projects — the makers of Four Loko — because their college son went on a some 30-hour drinking binge and shot himself at the culmination.

The mother is outraged and seeking to blame someone, unfortunately she has chosen to blame a company rather than the fact her son participated in binge drinking.

Unnecessary loss of human life is a terrible thing, but trying to attack a beverage company because your kid shot himself is like blaming the music industry for Columbine.

People think that bringing suit against these companies and removing caffeinated alcohol from the market is a strong preventative move against incidents like the one above that may occur in the future — as Penn Jillette would likely say, “This is bullshit.”

In Roslyn, Wash., nine students were hospitalized with high blood-alcohol levels and one girl nearly died, after having claimed to have consumed Four Loko. 

The facts most people are glazing over is that these students were also drinking vodka, rum and beer, and all the hospitalized students were underage drinkers from age 17 to 19. Inexperienced drinkers are given to overdoing their alcohol consumption. People age 12 to 20 drink 11 percent of all alcohol consumed in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Oh, and the student that shot himself in the first example, he was only 20 years old.

But, because the students were energized and because there is currently the “terrorist threat” of caffeinated alcohol running rampant in America, authorities and parents are banding together to eliminate the Four Loko menace from our fair country — all this in the name of keeping us safe —please see the aforementioned Jillette quote.

In Palm Coast, Fla., an 18-year-old took diet pills along with Four Loko and died. Well, let me see, another underage incident involving something used with Four Loko that became dangerous. 

A driver claimed to have had Four Loko before he ran a red light, killing a man from Orlando and his three sons. 

Ack! Another Four Loko-related death.

“Related” being the operative term, and only loosely at that, because the driver also admitted to having mixed other liquor with the Four Loko and having smoked marijuana. Clearly, though, Four Loko deserved the spotlight, as marijuana was already put on the dangerous list for reasons I still don’t fully comprehend, and as to the other alcohol, well, we already blame booze, so this wouldn’t be much of a headline without some controversy about a prominent subject in the media.

Oh, and by the way, the driver was underage.

I’m beginning to think this may just be more of an underage drinking problem than a problem with caffeinated alcohol, but then that is a problem this country has had for years, so trying to fix it doesn’t make for good headlines or make authorities look like they’re trying to do something new and grand to make Americans safe and secure.

The point I’m trying to make is that the entirety of the events are not being looked at closely enough before people are picking sides and rallying toward the mob’s cause.

On Nov. 17, the Food and Drug Administration issued a warning letter to Phusion Projects, along with three other makers of alcoholic energy drinks, saying their products were unsafe and illegal, and ordering them to move toward reformulating the drinks in 15 days. If the companies do not comply, the FDA may seek a court order to bar them from selling their products.

I was under the impression that the government wasn’t supposed to tell businesses what they can and cannot produce unless the means of production were prohibited or if the product was illegal. I realize that I am taking this to a bit of an extreme, and that my assumptions of this are based in Supreme Court rulings, and that some Americans — Iowans particularly, it seems — think the general populace can interpret the law better than the highly educated justices; but I only have a little bit of an education, what do I know.

But seriously, I still don’t understand what it is about the drinks themselves that are unsafe and illegal.

As far as I know, unless I time-traveled back to the 1920s, alcohol isn’t illegal, and neither is its manufacture by companies — yes, there are certain situations, but I am speaking generally.

Caffeine is most certainly legal, otherwise a great deal of our government employees are taking an illegal stimulant when they slam down the multiple Starbucks beverages they require to get going and keep going while they run our country. 

So, the problem lies in the mixture of the two. Well, I can see that. I mean, if I mixed the chemicals necessary to create meth and tried to sell it, I would be busted for illegal activities. Clearly Four Loko and these other caffeinated beverages are a risk to people in the same way as the drug meth.

I admit, the meth argument isn’t being used as readily as the argument by law officials and parents that Four Loko is like cocaine in a can — seriously, just Google it — but they all suffer from mistaken connections.

“There’s a particular interaction that goes on in the brain when they are consumed simultaneously,” Dr. Mary Claire O’Brien, professor of emergency medicine at Wake Forest University, told the New York Times. “The addition of the caffeine impairs the ability of the drinker to tell when they’re drunk. What is the level at which it becomes dangerous? We don’t know that, and until we can figure it out, the answer is that no level is safe.”

From what I gather, if they want to ban caffeinated alcohol, then they need to make it illegal to combine the substances. This means that bars could not serve Jager bombs or Red Bull vodkas. Oh, and Irish coffees, that caffeinated beverage that has existed for longer than I or my parents have been alive, that has to go as well.

And as to the versions in bars being a less-concentrated concoction of the two ingredients, I must say that I doubt people in bars are going to limit their alcohol consumption to only one or two drinks. So, if they can over-drink in the bar, why can’t they choose to do so at home?

I’m fine with the government placing a limit on the amount of alcohol allowed in a beverage and restricting the caffeine content. In fact, the companies are eliminating caffeine from their drinks or altering the content, much like what should have been insisted upon rather than the proposed ban. Funny thing is, Ricardo Carvajal, a lawyer at Hyman, Phelps & McNamara in Washington and a former associate chief counsel at the FDA, and Marc Scheineson, a lawyer with Alston & Bird in Washington and a former associate commissioner of the FDA, agreed it is unlikely that the FDA would go to seize the products because that involves going to court and convincing the Department of Justice.

Maybe I wasn’t wrong about my previous comments about Supreme Court rulings. Maybe judges do know how to interpret the law. Maybe an education does give you a leg up when trying to make an intelligent argument. But we’ll just ignore that for now.

Putting my slights and jabs aside for a moment, the current issue isn’t really about banning or restricting an illegal and dangerous drug. No, this is all about a bunch of frightened people trying to blame something and then the bandwagon effect occurring because the issue is something else entirely: underage drinking.

Officials are trying to keep us safe from decisions that they think are wrong. Binge drinking is dangerous, but not illegal. People have to face the reality that banning something because they want to blame it instead of the activities surrounding it is just idiocy.

Ever hear the phrase “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people”? Well, by accepting a ban on caffeinated alcohol, you are essentially saying that “Guns kill people,” that’s it.

All in all, I support limiting the alcohol and caffeine content of the drinks in question, and I certainly agree that these drinks should be kept out of the hands of children.

What I don’t agree with is the precedent this may set: that as adults, we are not fit to make our own decisions concerning activities that are not illegal.

Right or wrong, it is my right to choose how much alcohol I drink, how much caffeine I consume and if I want to combine them; or even if I want to eat unhealthily and become fat — if only America would make that a criminal act.

Again, allowing the ban on these caffeinated beverages, or even coercing the companies to eliminate the caffeine or the alcohol from the beverages, is not how the system should work; at least from where I sit. Agree with me or not, but learn the full story; that means not just taking what I say here as true, research it for yourself and be a part of the decisions that shape America.

Selah.