Rachel Weisel | Get 'em while they're young

Spicy Mango, Hot Melons, Spicy Lime and Hot Chocolate. These may sound like new varieties of lip gloss, Tic-Tacs or gum, but they're actually the mouth-watering, tropical flavors of one of Anheuser-Busch's newest alcoholic beverages, known as Spykes.

"Spykes is a malt-based beverage with caffeine, ginseng and guarana. Spykes mixes well with beer to add alcohol, caffeine and unique flavor and can also be chilled and consumed as a shooter," according to Anheuser-Busch's Web site.

But what the site doesn't allude to is the fact that Spykes is at the center of a raging controversy regarding underage drinking.

Anheuser-Busch, based out of my hometown of St. Louis, Missouri, claims the product is geared toward consumers ages 21-29.

On the contrary, with its flashy advertising and trendy packaging, Spykes is clearly targeting young and underage drinkers.

While Spykes can be taken as shots, the whole concept behind it is to mix it with other alcoholic beverages, like beer, to mask the taste of alcohol. This idea caters to young potential drinkers, many of whom are deterred from drinking because of what they consider cheap alcohol's unpleasant taste.

Spykes's promotional Web site, Spykeme.com, features upbeat music and pictures of the drink next to juicy watermelon slices and luscious chocolate bars, urging consumers to "Spyke up" their nights. Harmless fun, right?

Wrong. By making alcohol taste more like candy, Spykes could become a gateway drink, encouraging drinkers to not only start younger, but also harder.

Spykes alone already contains 12 percent alcohol, more than many beers and some wines. Therefore, adding Spykes to another drink could become dangerous, especially for young and inexperienced drinkers, who could end up consuming more alcohol than they realize.

Two of its other ingredients, ginseng and guarana, are similar to substances found in many popular energy drinks, such as Red Bull.

Available in more than 30 states for around a dollar apiece, Spykes comes in tiny, vividly colored, two-ounce containers. They suspiciously bear a striking resemblances to the innocent nail-polish bottles my 13-year-old sister keeps in her closet. They are portable and concealable - perfect for sneaking into the Quad in preparation for Spring Fling festivities or into a high-school prom.

This April is the 20th annual National Alcohol Awareness Month, sponsored by the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence Inc. Ironically, or perhaps, tellingly, this year's campaign focuses on underage drinking.

The prevalence of underage drinking in college is problematic, but it has simply become part of the Animal House experience of typical college life. It is unavoidable. Stepping over drunken 19-year-olds at a frat party is one thing. But stepping over intoxicated 14-year olds at a slumber party would be quite another.

College drinking is only one part of a much bigger problem. Spykes poses an even greater threat to younger and more impressionable, pre-adolescent consumers - like my little sister - who have yet to set foot on a college campus.

Spykes is available to them at a critical point in their lives, when they are starting to feel comfortable in their own skins. These are the same kids who are shopping, painting their nails and wearing makeup for the first time. They do not have the same judgment capabilities as a college student. Exposure to alcohol should not be another one of these firsts at such young age.

"Anheuser-Busch well knows that the younger kids are when they start drinking, and the more they drink, the likelier they are to become excessive adult drinkers," Joseph Califano, president and chairman of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, said in an April 4 statement.

In theory, the beer company advocates preventing underage drinking:

"Anheuser-Busch and its wholesalers have surpassed the half-billion mark in our collective efforts to fight drunk driving and underage drinking and to promote responsible consumption and respect for the law," the Web site states.

But no matter how much work Anheuser-Busch has done to combat underage drinking, its development and sale of Spykes directly contradicts this message.

A page on the site shows a large Budweiser ad proclaiming "Responsibility Matters."

If responsibility really matters to Anheuser-Busch, then out of concern for the health of young children across the country, the company should take Spykes off of the market.

Rachel Weisel is a College freshman from Chesterfield, Missouri. Her e-mail address is weisel@dailypennsylvanian.com. Writes of Passage appears on Fridays.

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