Thursday, October 05, 2006

I Can't Believe I've Never Heard of This Before

I've heard of people inhaling their drinks, but this is ridiculous:

State officials in the land of Old Grand-Dad, Jim Beam and Wild Turkey are pushing to ban a device that vaporizes liquor and allows people to inhale the intoxicating fumes for a quick high without the burn of hard liquor.

Teresa Barton, head of the Kentucky Office of Drug Control Policy, said banning alcohol vaporizers is a matter of public safety, not preserving the state's sipping whiskey industry. She said such devices could become 'a real deadly trap' because they have 'no purpose other than to get you drunk.'

So far, 17 states have banned them, including California, New York, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Ohio, and several others are considering doing so, said Sherry Green, executive director of the National Alliance for Model State Drug Laws. Tennessee, the home of Jack Daniels, already prohibits the vaporizers.

'When you inhale alcohol right into the lung tissue, that gets drawn right into the blood supply immediately, so it's a very rapid onset of the intoxicating effect, and so has obviously very high abuse potential,' said Robert Walker, an assistant professor at the University of Kentucky Center on Drug and Alcohol Research.

Walker said alcohol vaporizers bypass altogether the tactile pleasures of drinking wine with a fine meal or a cold beer with a pizza: 'You're going strictly to the intoxicating effect of alcohol.'"

7 comments:

John Rickards said...

We've got a few of those things in the UK. They've never really caught on, though, and that's in a culture where everyone drinks purely to get smashed and no one pretends otherwise.

JD Rhoades said...

One of the things I've always admired about the UK...there's not all this handwringng about "binge drinking" which is defined in the US as "five or more alcoholic drinks in any 24 hour period." I mean really...you call THAT a binge? A binge, to be worthy of the name, should at least end in jail. Or Guadalajara. Or both.

Anonymous said...

On the other hand, in this rotten midwestern climate during the winter, a whiskey vaporizer might be MUCH cooler to have around than the standard Vicks steam vaporizer. Why can't I get a buz and clear my sinuses at the same time?

Bill Cameron said...

I thought that was what Everclear was for.

Anonymous said...

So, what, people drink Jack because it "tastes good"? I admit to liking the taste of it when some coke is added, but, straight? I'll be over here huffing my booze....

David Terrenoire said...

I'd miss the scurvy-fighting qualities of my V&T's lime.

And we all know that's the only reason I drink. It's medicinal.

Unknown said...

"Tactile pleasures of drinking"?

What the hell kind of nancy boy talk is that? That man works in a Center for Drug and Alcohol Research and he doesn't know shooters and beer bongs were invented because a workin man gets plenty of tactile pleasure from swingin his hammer into his thumb? Numbing myself from "tack-tile pleasures" is why I drink in the first damn place.

Judas. Now I need two damn drinks. Shots.