I can usually pigeonhole my opinions well with the shorthand, “liberals = smart, libertarians = nutjobs”, but if this Diane Rehm show on the “dangers” of caffeine were 10 minutes longer, I’d be running screaming to the Cato Institute.

The essential premise of the show is that caffeine is bad for kids, and lots of things have caffeine, therefore something should be done. But with the exception of the scientist hired by Monster Beverage to research (and presumably defend) their products, the other guests and Rehm herself just took it for granted that N milligrams, where N is a randomly selected three-digit number, is bad.

That takes a special kind of sloppy thinking. The average cup of coffee has 80-100 milligrams, so hey, let’s call that a “normal” dose. My venti coffee has upwards of 330 milligrams, because it comes in a big cup (and because the average cup of coffee, in my opinion, is a goddamn shotglass). That’s too much. Likewise the 240 milligrams in a Monster Energy drink, because… well, no one really says. It’s just bad.

Personally, if I hear “think of the children” one more damn time in the discussion of any policy, I’m going to start deliberately knocking over toddlers on the sidewalk. But yes, there probably is an upper limit on what children’s intake of caffeine should be — and IMO, most children, after they’ve experienced one bad case of the caffeine jitters, learn what it is. Likewise with alcohol, sugar, and tobacco — most of these drugs, you’ve got a built-in limiting factor where the body says, “slow down, schmuck” after a rather overdone experiment.

What really amused me was hearing Michael Jacobson, of the Center for Science in the Interest of Outlawing Your Vices, say that no one sits down and has 24 ounces of coffee at a sitting. At the moment I heard that, I was somewhere around ounce 28.

The last time I had to be anywhere regularly at 7 AM, I was in high school. Most kids are legally mandated to show up around that time. I’m not a morning person and never was, and if someone had tried to take away my caffeine, one of two things would have happened: I’d have had my first “cold, dead fingers” political moment, or my grades would have plummeted. So, yes, I will think of the children — and I’ll tell them to stop using stimulants when we stop requiring them to live up to the same 24/7 rat race to which we subject our adults.

VOCO made a lot of (bad) headlines in January with their ridiculously sexist advertising and displays. Noted at CE Week that they’ve toned down quite a bit.

On the other hand, this is still considered appropriate for stairmaster sales by whatever clueless schmuck set up this booth: