Coffee lovers, you can now “inhale” your morning dose of caffeine.
A Harvard professor thinks the next big thing will be people inhaling their caffeine from a lipstick-sized tube but critics say the novel product is not without its risks.
The product, called AeroShot, went on the market late last month in Massachusetts and New York, and is also available in France.
A single unit costs $2.99 at convenience, liquor and online stores.
Biomedical engineering professor David Edwards said AeroShot is safe and does not contain common additives, like taurine, used to amplify the caffeine effect in common energy drinks.
Each grey-and-yellow plastic canister contains 100 milligrams of caffeine powder, about the amount in a large cup of coffee, plus B vitamins.
But Democratic U.S. Senator Charles Schumer of New York wants the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to review AeroShot, saying he fears it will be used as a club drug so that young people can drink until they drop.
Schumer’s national press secretary did not immediately respond to calls for comment.
FDA spokeswoman Siobhan DeLancey declined to comment, saying the agency will respond directly to Schumer on the matter.
Edwards said Schumer’s comments are understandable in the context of developments over the last few years, when students looking for a quick and cheap buzz began consuming caffeine-packed alcoholic drinks they dubbed ‘blackout in a can’ because of their potency.
But he said AeroShot is not targeting anyone under 18 and it safely delivers caffeine into the mouth, just like coffee.
‘Even with coffee — if you look at the reaction in Europe to coffee when it first appeared — there was quite a bit of hysteria,’ he said. ‘So anything new, there’s always some knee-jerk reaction that makes us believe ‘Well, maybe it’s not safe”.’
