On Bubble Gum-Flavored Beer & Cotton Candy Flavored Vaping

Blue Point Brewing, a Long Island brewery owned by Anheuser-Busch as a flagship, test market targeting younger customers, including hipsters and millennials, is now selling bubble gum flavored beer. Bad idea.

This is akin to cotton candy flavored vaping. What next? Candy cigarettes? Oh, I forgot; they have been doing that since I was a kid 50 years ago. But candy cigarettes are not drugs. Alcohol and nicotine are.

In December, 2018, the Surgeon General declared e cigarette use among youth to be “an epidemic.” The Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration also declared it an epidemic. Is kiddy flavoring of beer a route to a similar fate? Is this really what Amheuser-Busch wants? The Clydesdale horses are impressive! And now comes the bubble gum.

Overall beer sales were down in 2018, but craft brew sales were up. Craft breweries will get creative to attract younger drinkers, just as nicotine sales executives think outside of the (cigarette) box to boost sales and end-up with cotton candy and other flavored vaping products.

Adults want to drink? Your choice. Adults want to smoke. Okay, if you insist. But flashbacks to childhood candy is a rather transparent attempt to lure younger and younger persons to imbibe in their products.

Maybe Blue Point Brewing needs a crossing guard to get them to the playground of younger users. But the crossing guard should disarm them of messaging about how cute, silly and fun bubble gum beer can be.

Otherwise, children might get hurt.