‘Farewell to Four Loko’ was the theme of a party Jacqueline Taylor attended last Thursday for the malt liquor beverage nicknamed ‘blackout in a can.’

‘My friends were really out of control that had more than one,’ said Taylor, a sophomore speech pathology major whose peers told her they blacked out before from drinking one or two Four Lokos.

Students may take their last sips of the controversial drink by semester’s end, as major beverage distributors in New York state have until Friday to clear it off their shelves. Retailers that received Four Loko from their distributor can sell it after Friday until they run out of their remaining supplies. But Four Loko may find its way back onto store shelves with different ingredients, even as students and business owners expect many to stock up on the dwindling cases in their current form.

The drink has sparked national controversy, with the Food and Drug Administration warning that the beverage’s mix of alcohol and caffeine masks the ability of people to realize how drunk they really are. One 23.5-ounce can holds the equivalent of three beers — 12 percent alcohol by volume — and three cups of coffee.

The move to clear Four Loko from the state’s beverage distributors’ shelves stems from a Nov. 14 agreement, in which the company that produces Four Loko, Phusion Projects, told the New York State Liquor Authority it would stop shipping Four Loko and other alcoholic caffeinated drinks to the state by Nov. 19.

Phusion Projects has pledged Four Loko will return without the caffeine ingredients. The company must receive brand label approval from the State Liquor Authority to bring the reformulated product to New York, said Bill Crowley, a spokesman for the authority. Phusion Projects has not submitted an application to undergo the approval process, which takes about a week, Crowley said.

‘They would likely be approved,’ he said.

Four Loko remains available in some Syracuse stores, and Phusion Projects expects to clear retail shelves nationwide of its current caffeinated drink by Dec. 13.

Five rows of Four Loko stacked nearly six cases high tower above the cashier’s desk at Student’s Choice Market on Marshall Street. The store received 90 cases three weeks ago and 100 cases the following week, when its beverage distributor, Onondaga Beverage Corporation, stopped shipping Four Loko, storeowner Maurice Krohl said.

One girl walked into Krohl’s store and said she was having a going-away party for Four Loko when the state announced its plans in November to rid beverage distributors of the drink, Krohl said. Students are buying Four Loko for the price, even though they say it tastes terrible, he said. At his store, a can costs $4.50, and a 12-can case costs $50. As cheap as they may be, Krohl rakes in nearly $2,000 per week selling 40 to 50 cases.

‘That’s the only reason they drink it: because it’s cheap,’ Krohl said. ‘It’s a cheap high.’

He expects his remaining cases will not vanish until the end of the semester or the first week of school after Winter Break, he said. More students are now buying cases instead of the individual cans, Krohl said.

‘When they start finding out it’s hard to get, they’ll start buying more than one or two cans,’ he said.

The problem with Four Loko is people don’t think, and they mix hard liquor with it, said Betty Gonzalez, a daytime cashier at Student’s Choice Market. She tried half a can of Four Loko and decided it tastes nasty, she said.

‘I’d rather do a whole bottle of tequila before I do another one of them,’ she said.

But that isn’t stopping students from stocking up on the drink.

Graby’s Mini Mart on Westcott Street ran out of Four Loko two weeks ago, after selling at least 20 cases per week, said Moe Althour, who works the front counter at the store. Students have still come in for the drink and asked if the place would receive more, he said.

‘It’s more dangerous for you than good for you,’ he said.

The edgy, colorful image of Four Loko attracts college students and makes it a special item to them, so it is natural to stock up on the drink, said Kyu Lee, a Syracuse University professor of marketing.

The removal of Four Loko on store shelves could signal both a crisis and an opportunity for its producer, Lee said. Many students will temporarily feel sorry about the loss and move on to another product, but Four Loko could still remain very popular if it returns without caffeine as planned, he said.

‘What the company has to do is they have to make sure that this new product is not being viewed as a patched-up, watered-down Four Loko,’ Lee said. ‘So you’ll have to deliver the same amount of excitement, but my guess is that it’ll have to be very different.’

Until Four Loko returns to the shelves in a new form, a minority of drinkers could try to make a profit by purchasing and then selling the drink themselves, Lee said.

Ben Cohen, a junior information studies and finance major, also said he thinks some students will try to sell the drink for $5 to others. But he considered it more of a pregame drink than a party drink, he said.

‘I’ve really only consumed one, otherwise it’s too much,’ Cohen said.

Casey Lundberg, a senior finance major, saw many stores recently selling Four Loko in cases and students purchasing them, he said. He has drank his ‘fair share’ of Four Lokos to pregame, though not usually more than one before going out, he said.

‘It’s the most efficient pregame possible, bang-for-your-buck-wise,’ Lundberg said.

But he understands why Four Loko is being removed from the shelves, as he has witnessed people black out from it, he said.

‘It’s a s***y beverage. It does not taste good,’ he said. ‘And if anybody tells you it does, they’re lying.’

mcboren@syr.edu

Published on December 7, 2010 at 12:00 pm