Andrew Easterbrook

I saw on CloseUp the other night an item where a bunch of parents and academics were going on about how the “Energy Drink Companies” are so evil for marketing and selling concentrated energy drink shots to children. The general message was that this is horrible and someone (i.e. the government) should do something to put a stop to it.

I think this is ridiculous. There’s no way there should be any legal rules preventing the sale of high sugar and caffiene drinks to kids – it’s not the government’s place to impose those sort of rules. It’s a parent’s job to tell their children not to buy the drinks, if the parent doesn’t want the child to buy the drink. Imposing a law or regulation preventing kids from drinking tasty things that are bad for them is quite a substantial rejection of parental authority, admission parents cannot control their own children, and will relegate energy drinks to the same level as pills and drugs.

Energy drinks are not a social evil. They are not something so detrimental to the health of the country that they need to be regulated and controlled (and for that matter, nor is Coldral). Regulation and control should be limited to those very few things that cause significant and substantial harm to people that use them and only then, as a last resort, when all other avenues have been exhausted, AND when the thing-to-be-regulated has been proven to cause adverse effects no matter what the circumstances of use.