Futile interventions into private life like these erode the public’s faith in the competence and reasonability of the whole regulatory scheme.
The Sunny-D Sazerac? An Eggo Waffle White Lady? A Mountain Dew Martini? If none of that sounds especially appetizing to you, you’re not a marketing executive.
Classic food brands are increasingly venturing into the alcohol sector, creating niche products that blend booze and snack foods into one concoction that appears to appeal more to the online media outlets that promote them than to consumers. Nevertheless, a new trend is upon us, and so is the cycle of handwringing that so often accompanies them.
“Some states say adult and children’s drinks are getting too close,” the Wall Street Journal warned on Friday. Sure, these gimmicky new spirits tap into the sure-fire nostalgia of the Millennial customer base they’re designed to target, but has anyone thought about the children?
Regulators, consumer groups and public-health experts say these crossover products have the potential to create consumer confusion — and result in a parent inadvertently buying and serving alcohol to underage children.
We can be charitable and allow that there is a non-zero risk that some parent, somewhere, purchases a bottle of taco-flavored cognac on a lark from a licensed distributor and, in a state of subsequent inebriation, pours their toddler a stiff one. But that risk is not so elevated that we need to empower the state to limit access to these products. The regulatory apparatus, however, operates on the assumption that most of you are skipping through life with your shoes untied and will, therefore, mortally imperil your children absent their beneficent guidance.
“We were really concerned that busy parents, busy caregivers, busy shoppers, as they traversed the marketplace, were inadvertently grabbing the wrong thing,” Illinois Liquor Control Commission executive director Lisa Gardner told the Journal. Again, this isn’t an entirely unforeseeable prospect, but the individual it would describe cannot be shielded from the bad outcomes his or her staggering obliviousness will produce. Moreover, the uncharitable assumptions this regulator has internalized about the basic competence of the imbecilic masses she imagines she must save from themselves says more about the regulator than the targets of her altruism.
The food-booze crossover phenomenon isn’t new, nor is the moral panic around these products America’s professional meddlers whip up to justify their ever-expanding remit. “Two new brands, Alaska Distillery’s Salmon Vodka and Black Rock Spirits’ Bakon Vodka, are touting their carnivorous ingredients,” The Atlantic reported back in 2010. The early 21st-century trend around flavored vodkas, like Smirnoff’s whipped cream and marshmallow flavors, prompted a familiar bout of anxiety over these products’ potential to appeal to kids. “I see this move into these sweet drinks as catering to a youthful taste,” said Alcohol Policy Consultations president James Mosher in 2011. “This is not a drink that a mature adult is going to prefer.” Of course, they did and do. And the intervening decade has not seen an epidemic of children tricked into the act of underage drinking by cotton-candy-flavored vodka.
The circumstances that lead to underage drinking are not unknown or unknowable, and most of them are related to unfortunate circumstances in their lives. If the adults by whom they are surrounded contribute to that condition, it is often a product of malicious rather than benign neglect. The regulatory apparatus cannot mitigate the risks of the former, so it expends all its energy targeting the latter — it’s the managerial equivalent of looking for your car keys where the light is good. And it is not a consequence-free enterprise. Futile interventions into private life like these erode the public’s faith in the competence and reasonability of the whole regulatory scheme. But if Americans are losing faith in their magnanimous regulators, the feeling is apparently mutual.