Looking For Cheaper Gas? Put Four Loko in Your Tank!
The banned drink is literally being converted into gas for cars. The same goes for Bud Extra, Tilt, and Sparks.
Hold up a sec: Isn’t Four Loko that liquid blast of alcohol loaded with caffeine that the FDA ordered removed from store shelves in November, 2010? Didn’t the agency say that this combination of a depressant drug and a stimulant drug, mixed with fruit juices, was potentially dangerous? Didn’t Four Loko and similar legally sold beverages induce a “wide awake drunk” condition in its consumers, resulting in too many car wrecks, assaults, and incidents of alcohol poisoning? That Four Loko? Yes, the very same! 
The once-popular drink, now absent from public consumption, is on its way by the kilos and truck loads to MXI Environmental Services and other plants in Virginia, North Carolina and Maryland according to a recent article on the Fox News web site. As unusual as this sounds, we’ve got to hand it to the FDA for leading the nation in recycling efforts! And perhaps it makes sense that it’s not a great idea to drink stuff that, with a bit of scientific wizardry, we can power our cars with.
Fox reported that MXI is one of the few facilities in the nation that recycles ethanol, making the company a great fit for converting the fermented Four Loko into auto fuel.
When FDA warnings reached the drink’s manufacturers, Phusion Projects of New Century Brewing Company and United Brands Company, Inc, it became a sort of shunned "untouchable” of the US consumer scene. The result was a huge surplus of a beverage that, despite the bad press, was popular among recreational drinkers who preferred a little fruit juice with their drug cocktails. After all, it certainly isn’t uncommon for alcohol and caffeine tablets to be sold separately in convenience stores all over the country – to the delight of long-haul truckers and young people. Nobody ever thought of using these substances together, right?
Whatever. For all intents and purposes, the FDA ended this querulous debate between the public and its regulatory agency last November. Four Loko may have gone bust as a legally sold beverage, but its future as an auto fuel is quite hopeful.
This is also good news for Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors since these companies removed Bud Extra, Tilt and Sparks drinks from the market over two years ago; MXI is also buying these products for their recycled ethanol.
Here’s how it works: MXI distills the alcohol from the now-kaput drinks and then sells this fuel source so it can be blended into gasoline. Fox News reported that the aluminum cans are sold to recycling plants that convert them into new cans. Who knows: Your next Coke can could have once held the legendary Four Loko only a month earlier! A far cry better than all that old metal clogging up a landfill somewhere, this much is certain.
And as gas prices continue at an outrageous high with no end in sight, think of what fun it will be to pull into your local 7-Eleven and fill ‘er up with Four Loko!
