With names like Amp, Rockstar and Full Throttle, caffeinated energy drinks market to young people — a group particularly vulnerable to the effects of too much caffeine, researchers and advocates said.
“It’s clear the target group is athletically inclined young males,” said Roland Griffiths, a psychiatry and neuroscience professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and lead author of a study on caffeinated energy drinks.
Children are less likely to use caffeine regularly, so they may feel the effects more, he said. And without consistent labeling, they may not know how much caffeine they are consuming, he said.
Michael Gimbel, director of Powered by ME, an anti-steroid awareness campaign out of St. Joseph Medical Center, visits schools and other organizations to warn youth about the effects of performance enhancers, including caffeinated energy drinks.
Often young children recognize the cans he brings in as a display, he said, saying they drink the beverages.
“We are talking about 8-, 9-, 10-year-old children,” he said. “They think they are sports drinks.”
In his office, Gimbel has a collection of energy drinks he said are marketed toward children. One can shares its name with video game character Donkey Kong, and another called the Flaming Moe energy drink takes its name from a bartender on the widely popular cartoon “The Simpsons.” Another product, Maxxed, comes in the form of a lollipop.
Griffiths also raised concerns these energy drinks could be a “gateway” to other forms of drug dependence. Some energy drinks, such as “Blow” and “Cocaine” glamorize drug use though their name and packaging, he said.
He pointed to one study of 1,253 college students that showed energy drink consumption “significantly predicted” later prescription stimulant use.
There should be restrictions on marketing these drinks to youth, Griffiths said.
The American Beverage Association, however, again faulted researchers for combining more mainstream energy drinks with the more extreme “novelty companies.”
“Furthermore,” the association said in a statement, “our companies market their energy drink products responsibly.”
[email protected]
