“All I remember is waking up the next morning,” one junior said.

Parties are about to get a lot less loko.

Following recent studies by the Food and Drug Administration, which showed that alcoholic energy drinks like Four Loko pose a “public health concern,” the FDA announced Nov. 17 that the beverage is unsafe and illegal.

The FDA sent warning letters on the same day to four companies marketing alcoholic energy drinks, including Phusion, the manufacturer of Four Loko.

Stores will continue to sell Four Loko for the time being, but can’t receive any new shipments of the drink.

The Problem

Parents, administrators and health officials had been advocating a ban of Four Loko following several incidents of alcohol poisoning, including the hospitalization of 23 students at Ramapo College in New Jersey.

This fall, there have been at least two incidents where a student has gotten alcohol poisoning from drinking excessive amounts of the beverage, principal Alan Goodwin said.

“I am hearing that this is a beverage of choice right now among our students, and that this past weekend there were again unsupervised parties where drinking took place,” he wrote in a Nov. 18 email to parents. “The students are outsmarting the adults.”

Students circumvent alcohol laws by having older siblings buy alcohol for them or using fake IDs.

The Product

Four Loko comes in eight flavors, including lemonade, fruit punch and blue raspberry. The 23.5-ounce cans have an alcohol content of 12 percent, the equivalent of about four beers, and the caffeine content of three cups of coffee, according to Four Loko’s website.

The drink’s price — a mere $2.50 per can — and the high alcohol content make it appealing to both college and high school students.

“They cost way less than other alcoholic beverages,” said one junior who served Four Lokos at a party he recently hosted. “And they get you [drunk] quicker. With beer it takes you a good amount of cans to get drunk. But with Four Loko, only one.”

The Reaction

Although students recognize that the drink is unhealthy and potentially harmful, some argue that the combined effects of the caffeine and alcohol (described by the FDA as “wide-awake drunk”) make it well worth the risk.

The ban wasn’t going to keep him from illegally getting the beverage while it’s still on the shelves, one junior boy said.

“Screw the FDA,” he said. “What’s going to happen to my Four Loko Fridays?”

What differentiates the Four Loko drinking experience from that of hard liquor, a sophomore girl said, is that the flavor is very tangy and sweet. Instead of taking a shot, drinkers can sip the beverage.

“It’s very different than being normally drunk because there’s so much caffeine, and you feel so awake, so you just keep drinking,” she said. “You don’t realize how drunk you are at all.”

The Effects

For stores that do sell the drink, the FDA’s ban has helped business in short term. Following the announcement, some desperate Loko fans began stockpiling the beverage.

“People just keep buying more and more,” said Vijay Sangar, manager of Tenley Wine and Liquors. “Since they announced the ban, we sold seven to ten cases, our entire stock.”

When it comes to the ban, there’s no doubt the issue has become very sensitive and contentious. As a result, many bars and liquor stores don’t stock Four Loko or similar alcoholic energy drinks.

“The drink is kind of controversial, so we don’t want to have it here,” said Brian Murphy, manager of Cork, a beer and wine store in downtown Bethesda. “A lot of people ask; they’re having a hard time finding it. Because it’s banned and hard to get, people want it more.”

Murphy said he thinks that the ban is out of the government’s jurisdiction.

“You know what you’re drinking when you buy it,” he said. “You need to know how to deal with it properly. If you can’t handle it, don’t drink it.”

The three co-founders of Phusion maintain that its products are safe.

“We have repeatedly contended—and still believe, as do many people throughout the country—that the combination of alcohol and caffeine is safe,” they wrote on Phusion’s website. “If our products were unsafe, we would not have expected the federal agency responsible for approving alcoholic beverage formulas — the Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau — to have approved them.   Yet, all of our product formulas and packaging were reviewed and approved by the TTB before being offered to consumers.”

The Future

In anticipation of the ban, Phusion announced Nov. 16 that they will develop a new Four Loko product that doesn’t contain caffeine.

Although the sans-caffeine Four Loko drink that will still be sold may seem less appealing to some students, one senior doubts that people will stop drinking it entirely.

“It still has a lot of alcohol in it, it’s still inexpensive and people still like to party,” he said.

In the meantime, Goodwin urged parents in the Nov. 18 email to remain cautious about their children’s alcohol consumption.

“PLEASE talk to your child about making the right decisions, about the dangers of the new drink, and please step up your vigilance,” he wrote.