Drug Education Blog

Our Addiction Radio podcast looks at the synergistic effects of combining alcohol with caffeine, as well as electronic or e-cigarettes, the attractiveness of both to younger audiences, and effects of marketing.

Transcript of podcast (click to listen):

CNS: Hi and welcome to the CNS addiction pod cast, I’m Howard LaMere,  here with Dr Darryl Inaba, and Darryl there’s a bunch of interesting things in the news this week, and I don’t know, which you might want to comment on but just a quick list just for the benefit of people listening. Alcohol and caffeine drinks is being targeted by concerned people in the government as something as maybe needs some regulation, electronic cigarettes where also in the news being something that’s a largely made in China, and the health concerns around that and especially unknown additives and um, the continuation of the story about Michael Jackson and the propofol anesthetic. The abuse of that especially by the medical and medical profession itself as well as high profile folks that afford that can afford it. Maybe the one you’re looking at there a alcohol & caffeine drinks might be of something, might be something to chat about a bit.

Darryl: Howard actually those are all phenomenal developments and are interesting things to talk about. We’ve noticed this, this growth of caffeinated alcoholic beverages along time ago not just the fact that right now they’re coming out combined together where they’re mixing um, the vodka and the bourbon and the other things right along with the a soda and the fruit drinks in the, in the can that are sodas combined project, and of course that can supposedly only goes to adults twenty one years old.

The youth are the ones and under aged drinkers are the ones who are most attracted by these types’ drinks.

But prior to that there was, there is, still a huge growth in, what they call the bomb technique, out here, the bomb, there’s actually I think many of the bars now have specialized mini bars that, that target and focus on the combination of energy drinks with a shot of some sort of liqueur or some sort of liquid. The most popular one I’ve seen is Jägermeister.

Where one club here in the local area has a special bar that specializes with a red bull drinks. With red bull in a glass and then a shot of Jägermeister mixing that together foams up when it’s mixed together drinking that down, another club here has a rockstar.  Rockstar is the one they like where they mix it with Rockstar and then another one has Monster, it depends on which popular energy drinks that people are interested in. But it’s a phenomenon that really goes back to the old concept of a speed ball where you mix both a drug of stimulatory brain activity with another drug of depressant activity in the brain and in all fairness the a, and when we looked at that in pharmacology as, what happens when you combine an upper and a downer usually the results were you get better effects than either of them alone. That the people who took or were exposed to morphine and cocaine or amphetamine and some sort of depressant drugs that, that was the best high they ever got was a combination

CNS: Yeah it doesn’t cancel each other out it doesn’t make you like normal.

Darryl: Yeah that’s the bigger myth or misunderstanding that they’re going to be an antidote for each other.

And so if you od on one you can be wakened up by the other or if you’re too over amped you can be put to sleep by the downer and they’re, they’re not true antagonist they don’t cancel out each other but what’s interesting is that they’re physic effects or the emotional effects that people get out of them when they’re combined seems to be almost additive or synergistic. Rather than canceling they actually augment each other. People really feel better when you, when you combine them so that’s one aspect about these energy drinks and caffeine being mixed with alcohol that you’re going to get a better effect, you know and people are going to get more euphoric and its going to be more habituating or more interesting or more addictive, to those people who are more inclined to addiction. The other thing that’s, that’s occurring is a dangerous pharmacology in which they work by effecting different parts of the brain and different brain chemistry. So what’s really happening when they take the combination of an upper and downer is they’re getting some parts of their brain that are being energized or being more stimulated or seemingly more alert while another part of their brain is being depressed or made sleepy so it’s sort of the equivalent of getting a wide awake, wide awake drunk, somebody who’s intoxicated, who’s reflexes are diminished, who’s perceptions are diminished and all that but emotionally they feel less sleepy or less drowsy and so that’s, that’s sets the stage for much more accidents, a lot more problems that they’ll get from, from a just drinking alone.

CNS: And probably the inclination to take more of it.

Darryl: Yeah because it’s euphoric, it’s, the combination gives you a better high too and then the inclination because it suppresses your inhibitions and things like that, you’re memory, you’re going, you’re going to use more drugs. So the person who’s a going to participate with the energy drinks with the alcohol or these new products that are combining caffeine with alcohol in a can is, is going to probably end up doing more then they norm, would normally do of either coffee or alcohol and in that way suffering a greater chance of, of problems from each of those drugs. But it is a phenomena that is really, really popular I see amongst very, very young drinkers, people who are twenty one and are just turned twenty one and are able to drink but more sadly I see it more common in the under age drinkers of people who aren’t legally able to drink but they’re getting into the drinking scene early and they seem to be really attracted to this combination speed ball of alcohol with caffeine

CNS: Yeah and probably part of, I think part of the concern here by the government by regulators is, that it is an attractive component?

Darryl: Attractive in terms of?

CNS: Yeah attractive to a younger audience and you know, I don’t know how regulation does much to that other than taking it off the market.

Darryl: It’s, it’s the same thing we looked at when we looked at nicotine, when nicotine needed to have a certain market share by increasing it’s, it’s sales by so much and they maxed out on the, the adult population, we believe we saw marketing that was focused or that was targeted to under age smokers, you know. Cartoonish types figures, Joe Camel scene was all about that, the whole allure was to a much younger population and I think the same thing is happening with these combination of buzz drinks or alcohol caffeine drinks, primarily because the whole energy drink scene is really a young scene, it’s started, it’s focused on, it’s marketed to, and if you look at the buyer, the profile of the average buyer of, of red bull or rockstar or monster they’re going to be a much, much younger population so you have that inherent population to begin with and inherent market and then when you add alcohol to that mix it just sort of exponentially adding your chances to a gain that market share.

CNS: I don’t know if its directly related but lets chat a little bit about the a electronic cigarette, it showed up on national public radio recently and what I didn’t know about it is that it’s apparently, primarily produced in China so there’s a lot of concerns about what might be in there and about, about the labeling. What do you think about the labeling, in general in both. I mean labeling is mentioned in, in this context in the energy and alcohol drinks because it I mean it says all over it that there’s alcohol in it but it doesn’t say how much caffeine there is in it and in the context of the electronic cigarettes it’s in a solution of Propylene Glycol which is not a terribly good thing to take into your body.

Darryl: Labeling certainly can play a major role in how market, in how product is marketed and how it’s viewed and when it became law that everything had to be, list it’s contents say food and people very quickly realized the marketing potential that that had and was able to promote products just by having their labeling or making sure they had a contents that were attractive to certain populations and track that population the same way you know labeling for a drugs like caffeine and nicotine has always played, I think, a major role and a very bizarre one, you would think when the government came out with each pack of nicotine had to be labeled that this is harmful to your health and everything that would be a deterrent, but it proved not to be a deterrent and in one case you had death brand cigarettes who decided to make that a positive and came out with a more appropriate warning that says, saying that this product will defiantly kill you. You know, it’s going to give you lung cancer, it’s going to mess with your heart and you’re going to die twenty two younger than the average non smoker and it certainly did not help it’s sales, it kind of boosted them because you have that kind of gangster element or the contrary element that I’m going to do this and that’s the case may be. But the whole move, this whole thing with electronic cigarettes and when I first heard about it I don’t know that much about I must admit, but when I first heard about I thought it was a form of trying to promote healthier nicotine you know, a form of, of trying to get rid of all the resins and all of the tars and all of the you know hundreds, hundreds of carcinogens and other nasty products that you get from smoking tobacco and so I thought I at least, I mean you know, at least now, the industry if it’s coming out of China, I don’t know who’s sponsoring it out of China or whatever but at least the industry is now willing to forego their old argument for hundreds of years that make claim and they actually testified before congress and had their doctors lined up and experts saying “In my opinion nicotine is not addictive”. At least now they’re foregoing this and saying hey, we’re not selling you the pleasure of, of the taste and the process of smoking, we’re selling you something you got, you’re strung out on, and we’re going to give it to you in a form that’s maybe a harm reduction form. You know we’re going to reduce the harm by giving it to you a purer form and one that’s going to be less carcinogenic although nicotine itself is carcinogenic; it’s going to be less so, without all those additives and the adulterants or whatever. So I thought that’s what was going to be and maybe it was a half way rational approach to satisfy the nicotine addicted population who weren’t going to stop smoking, using nicotine. But as it turns out what I understand of these a products that, that are these electronic cartridges that, that are filled with nicotine in the standardized form or in a gaseous form, is that they contain some of the other chemicals found in nicotine, they contain some of the other additives already there and as you mentioned there’s the potential that there could be other additives added to it. Now I imagine they have to come under FDA scrutiny in order to be sold as a product.

CNS: Apparently that’s part of why it’s in the news, apparently it’s not it, hasn’t been approved.

Darryl: Yeah, I don’t know how that works, how that, you’ve got these Indian cigarettes like Bidi and stuff like that its suppose to be made out of certain kinds of herbal, herbal plants and of a betel nut leaves and things like that that are sold for smoking but yet they aren’t, they don’t seem to come regulated so I’m not sure how our government decides what gets regulated and what doesn’t. But if they’re not regulated and if they maybe they slipped under the exemption for nicotine, nicotine early on its career gained a federal exemption that says that they don’t have to be banded. The way the government, the way our laws are, if, if a product is shown to cause cancer it’s, it’s no longer allowed for human consumption. Nicotine is the only substance I know that’s exempt from that condition because of the law being tobacco history from 1920’s and 30’s. Well maybe they’re, they’re slipping in under that, they’re saying this is nicotine and it’s, it’s allowed to be sold and they’re not saying what else is in there and what else going to be in there. But one thing that’s clear from the history nicotine in the United States, is that if you have a population, addicted populations, who are going to be attracted to a product and will be a loyal faithful population then you’re going to do everything you can to claim or keep that population using that substance. Plus you want to introduce other people so we saw all the manipulations of nicotine to make it more powerful, more addictive, at the same time they’re saying it’s not addictive. The creation of free base nicotine and who knows maybe the nicotine in these cartridges and these electronic nicotine, nicotine products is actually free base nicotine and not nicotine salts and therefore free base nicotine being much more addictive and toxic well you’re going to create a much greater degree of addiction so it, it is an interesting phenomena and probably one we need to look at but maybe if we look at it side ways or close enough it’s going to evoke a need to re-look at all of our nicotine laws and of course you know there was a recent partnership made between the tobacco industry and the government where by the FDA can now regulate the tobacco industry but, but they cant ban it that was the deal that was struck so this, this will be an interesting legal political phenomena that’s pushed up to our fore front to see where this takes us.

CNS: And as all of these topics, I’m sure we’ll get to talk about it multiple times in the future.

You’ve been listening to the CNS pod cast for this week and if you have any questions or comments we’d love to hear them. Send them along in an email and Dr Inaba will try to respond to them as possible in future broadcasts or pod casts and you can do that by visiting our web site and sending us an email from there and that website is cnsproductions.com. Darryl, thank you once again and talk to you soon.

Thanks for visiting the CNS pod cast. Please check back soon for the next in the series and visit our website www.cnsproductions.com.

 

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