When the recent FDA ban on manufactured caffeinated alcoholic beverages recently went into effect, thousands of unsold cases of the beverage Four Loko became contraband.
What to do with the evil mixtures of two otherwise completely legal substances? Why not turn it into…motor fuel!
Beginning in November, after federal authorities decreed that Four Loko and similar drinks be yanked from supermarket shelves pending a formula change, wholesalers began sending cases of the caffeinated malt beverages to MXI Environmental Services in Virginia. It’s one of three facilities in the United States that recycles ethanol.
“We’re equipped to process four truckloads a day, and we’re at full capacity,” Brian Potter, MXI’s vice-president, told the Associated Press. “There are about 30 different products involved, and we’ve only seen a couple of them at this point. It could go on for several months.” Each truck carries 2,000 cases of the 23.5-ounce cans, and come from wholesalers in Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland and other east coast states.
Yes, the nanny state has finally inverted upon itself. Five years after the first federal mandates to put ethanol (formerly a fuel for revelry) into the motor fuel supply, your car may be among the final consumers of the original Four Loko. Ethanol fuel distilleries in Virginia are turning the now-illegal beverage into the mandatory gasoline additive.
Welcome to America in 2010: What the nanny state mandates you not consume, the “green” state turns into something you don’t want and makes you consume. And you paid for it.
Mike Watson is the editor at large for the Virginia Informer and a member of the Student Free Press Association.
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