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."
FDA review means little (Score:5, Interesting)
Bottom line here: Don't trust the FDA when it comes to food safety. It may be their responsibility to ensure food is safe, but they're so horribly underfunded and compromised by corporate interests that they cannot realistically be expected to succeed.
Re:Great (Score:4, Interesting)
not to mention it's incredibly expensive. i computed it once, iirc it's about 100x as expensive as no-name caffeine pills, and 200x more expensive than bulk anhydrous powder. about its only upside would be that it's maybe harder to overdose, if the effects are actually immediate (which i'm not sure about).
i can only imagine that this is due to some drug war-stigma against pills. maybe it's for women; studies have shown that women prefer to insufflate their drugs.
Re:Great (Score:5, Interesting)
WCPGW
I used to have a chemlab-grade bottle of pure caffeine. It had no less than 8 different warning labels on it telling you how it could (and most likely would) kill you. Most people don't understand how small a 'real' amount of Caffeine they are consuming. In amounts the equivalent of say, snorting a line of cocaine, you would cause *serious damage. What's to keep your average marker-sniffing high school student from cracking these open and going to town (and then to the hospital)?
Re:FDA review means little (Score:5, Interesting)
The FDA is a gimp government department. The only thing it can review in depth is approval for new drugs, and that's only because the corporations submitting the drugs have to pay for that. Funding for everything else, from food and cosmetics inspection to even chasing down advertisers that use the phrase 'FDA approved' illegally, is so hamstrung as to be useless. The only time the FDA gets involved is when there's press coverage on people getting sick and/or dying. Only a very, very small fraction of meat is ever inspected... and there are holes in the system so big you could fly a 737 through it and still have ample room to fit at least a dozen Rush Limbaughs lengthwise through them. Take honey, for example: Honey is mixed and remixed with many other suppliers, such that the expiration date is never known. Should a particular batch of honey be close to expiring or would otherwise fail inspection, it is shipped across the border, mixed in with good honey, and then imported back. This is legal. There's so many examples of this it's not even funny.
Bottom line here: Don't trust the FDA when it comes to food safety. It may be their responsibility to ensure food is safe, but they're so horribly underfunded and compromised by corporate interests that they cannot realistically be expected to succeed.
Are you aware that ancient Egyptian tombs have been unsealed and were found to contain honey thousands of years old that was still edible? It's an excellent preservative.
I'm no fan of the FDA either but this isn't your strongest example.