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FDA Bans Pure Bulk Caffeine Products, Citing "significant Public Health Concern"
Companies can no longer sell bulk packages of liquid or powdered caffeine directly to consumers, the Food and Drug Administration announced Friday. The policy will take immediate effect "given the significant public health concern," according to the agency's statement released Friday. "Highly concentrated and pure caffeine, often sold in bulk packages, have been linked to at least two deaths in otherwise healthy individuals," the agency stated.
[...] In small doses, if you're otherwise healthy, caffeine shouldn't kill you. But part of the issue is that highly concentrated caffeine looks nothing like the kinds of caffeinated products we're used to seeing. Instead, it can look like water if it's in a liquid form or sugar if it's powdered. "The consequences of a consumer mistakenly confusing one of these products could be toxic or even lethal," the agency stated.
[...] Between 10 and 14 grams of caffeine is considered life-threatening, according to the FDA's guidelines, though people can have an irregular or rapid heart rate and seizures after taking just a gram. The amount of concentrated caffeine that's considered safe at a time—200 milligrams—is very, very small.
Also at Bloomberg.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by jmorris on Tuesday April 17 2018, @04:32AM (4 children)
You are the reason we are a dying society. Yes you. You personally.
A lot of stuff is dangerous and can kill you. It all used to be quite legal, sold over the counter and very few people died. Did you know you used to could go into a feed store or a hardware store and just buy a few sticks of dynamite? Folks used it to blow up stumps and other mundane uses. No government lists, no special licenses, you could just go in, grab a few sticks and walk over to the cash register and buy it. Just hearing that tale probably makes you want your snuggie and a safe place to cry. Most of the nastiest drugs we now fight the "War on some drugs" over used to be sold over the counter and fewer people per-capita were dying of overdoses. Dodge City's worst year was a lot safer then our nation's capital is now with an almost total ban on bearing arms and lets not even discuss the real shithole cities, all with gun bans.
But you know what really pisses me off? My grandchildren shall never know the joy of a real chemistry set, because you can't buy them anymore. That is entirely on you. YOU are helping fuck up my grandchildren's future.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday April 17 2018, @01:53PM
Agreed. That's where the DIY movement comes in, I think. Being able to manipulate matter is our birthright as humans. When they take that away it is a direct assault on who we are.
I want us to travel in a different direction as a global culture from the one we've been headed in, where we're all squeezed into ever tighter boxes for the control and benefit of a very few. Teaching us to be helpless and dependent from cradle to grave is abject tyranny. Instead, I want us all to play with real chemistry sets and work with power tools and how to build and design the things around us in our material culture, because what we build and do is the expression of the human spirit, and that is the greatest resource mankind has, not oil, not diamonds, not land.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 17 2018, @02:05PM
do what any other red-blooded american does -- break the law and claim ignorance of it when caught.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday April 17 2018, @02:32PM
I have very little argument with that. Other than the concerns that there are bad people who do bad things. But that has always been true. I would propose that certain bad things should be kept out of the hands of certain bad people. But that idea never seems to get very far. Even if it is a sincere attempt at not taking away everyone's guns, explosives and chemistry sets. (I enjoyed 3 chem sets as a kid. And other dangerous things like CRTs removed from trashed TVs, and other scary things.)
I would be more worried about climate change than chemistry sets.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday April 17 2018, @06:12PM
I would like to see a citation for "very few people died", possibly modified as "very few people injured". The human IQ distribution hasn't shifted all that much, and seeing how stupid many people are today, I find it dubious that "very few people died". You also need to account for the fact that there was a lot fewer people overall.
I don't entirely disagree with you, especially now that the Internet exists where even someone who doesn't know how to use X can reasonably obtain the knowledge to do so. However, I am human and suffer no delusions about my own human fallibility.
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