

FDA To Review Inhalable Caffeine 172
First time accepted submitter RenderSeven writes "Manufacturing.net reports that U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials plan to investigate whether inhalable caffeine sold in lipstick-sized canisters is safe for consumers and if its manufacturer was right to brand it as a dietary supplement. AeroShot went on the market late last month in Massachusetts and New York, and it's also available in France. Consumers put one end of the canister in their mouths and breathe in, releasing a fine powder that dissolves almost instantly."
Great (Score:4, Insightful)
Instant jitters and an easy way to dose higher than you'd expect.
~S
.NET (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Great (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Great (Score:5, Insightful)
What's to keep your average marker-sniffing high school student from cracking these open and going to town (and then to the hospital)?
A fatal dose would cost about "three hundred" or so dollars and ripping all the canisters apart would take hours, I suppose. And probably more mechanical skill that your average stimulant addict.
Probably a "easier" way to poison someone, since foul play is expected if they find your blood full of rat poison, but if there's so much caffeine in your blood that its crystallized (slight exaggeration) then they'll just shrug their shoulders and say "I saw this on Oprah; kids these days; too bad"
Re:We're all going to be thinner (Score:5, Insightful)
Caffeine pills. nodoz and friends. I used them to wean myself off caffeinated energy drinks without a headache. Its been awhile but I used a spreadsheet and I distinctly remember how much of a PITA it was to chop nodoz smaller than 1/4 size so I went for 1/2 pill intervals. I recall the process took a couple days.
Psychological addiction was unaffected of course. Sit at computer, sip energy drink, right?
Re:not inhaled (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:FDA review means little (Score:5, Insightful)
Citation needed.
Every civilization that has had access to bees since before there was writing?
Re:Great (Score:5, Insightful)
In amounts [of caffeine] the equivalent of say, snorting a line of cocaine, you would cause *serious damage.
Citation please.
In my misspent youth circa the early 80s, there were commonly available "fake speed" caffeine pills circulating...made to look like real 'pink hearts' or 'black beauties'..which were sold legally and prominently advertised in High Times. And kids would bust them open and snort them, something I tried exactly once. It burned like hell, but nobody died, went to the hospital, or even got particularly high from them.
And just to look at numbers...the typical cup of coffee has 100mg of caffeine, a can of Jolt has 280mg. So 4 cans of Jolt is more damaging than ingesting a entire gram of pure cocaine? I don't see it.
Not that I'm saying approving this is a good idea, even as someone pretty heartily opposed to drug prohibition in all its forms. But I don't think the proposition that pure caffeine is more dangerous than cocaine stands up to the facts.