Energy Drinks In Laguna Beach: Xs Energy® Is Truly In Excess

Xs® Energy's David Vanderveen: The Corporate Pope Pious I of Laguna Beach Dispenses Bad Medicine And Poor Moral Advice

(LAGUNA BEACH, CA) - "Who could imagine that they would freak out somewhere in Kansas?
Who could imagine that they would freak out in Washington, D.C.?
Everybody's clean and it can't happen here
No, no, it won't happen here
I'm telling you it can't
It won't happen here"

It Can't Happen Here (1966: Lyrics by MOI founder Frank Zappa)

Well, America's parents are finding out that it can happen here, there and anywhere: The inherent dangers of energy drinks, beyond the humorous Ritalin-simily jokes, has hit home. Doctors have been warning them for years but they were too busy or stupid to listen, now lawsuits, finger-pointing and the blame game is on.

Prescription and illegal drugs abound, but this liquid junk supplement can be found in your local supermarket, deli, diner or in your friend's home refrigerators. They are ubiquitous and should be banned as soon as possible until properly analyzed for both short and long term effects. Then maybe deemed controlled, over-21 only substances.

Some that market this crap have hidden behind the old "It isn't guns that kill people, people kill people" BS. You know, no one held a gun to their children's heads and forced them to swallow the possibly poisonous substances. Hey, if kids literally swallow hip and slick advertising kool-aid and imbibe, don't blame us. Blame parental control. Their your kids, you babysit them, we're not ultimately responsible

Unaddressed by these profit-seeking purveyors of potential toxicity is that unlike adults who get regular health checkups, children seldom do unless they become very sick-----Or go into cardiac arrest due to slamming down these drinks. So children are on the cutting edge, the canaries in the energy drink coal mine. They are these drinks target demographic, the crash (literally) test dummies with unformed fragile organs and undeveloped immunity systems.

Arguably, a serious lack of accountability and responsibility are integral when we ask ourselves "What's wrong with our country?" No one wants to accept the blame if they can hide behind corporate curtains. Funny, the US Supreme Court decided that corporations are people, yet parents now trying to corner and then litigate MONSTER® and 5 Hour Energy® are hitting walls attempting to find the actual individuals in these companies to blame.

Impersonal public statements by corporate PR flacks abound in their defense and in their disclaimers---maybe they were waiting for some cancer clusters, mass murders or suicides, you know directly attributable deaths? Otherwise, it's business as usual, raking in the big $$$ while the FDA stands around doing nothing.

Here in Laguna, we don't have to picket a factory or corporate HQ behind gates and mean security guards: Our own home grown creator and purveyor of this evil type substance is named David Vander-vain, the sobriquet apt because of his smarmy attitude and constant public pontification.

He hypocritically lectures our city council and committees, also hectors the community from the pulpit of a freebie newspaper column space. Yet he peddles the most imaginably horrible cocktail, a mixture of synthetic high B Vitamin dosage with synthetic high potency caffeine: Xs® Energy drinks.

No, Houston, we DO have a problem: It's a man who's basically running an unlicensed pharmacy and distribution network in our midst. His recent tirade is about two main issues, that I believe are related, that have a nexus: The rising concern over lack of adult supervision at private home parties where alcohol and the usual underage abuse suspects are obviously being consumed.

Here we're trying to pass a Social Host Ordinance (SHO) that holds parents and homeowners accountable and fiscally liable, even if they're away and absentees during the raves and rages. In a community awash with money, the parents often leave town for a night or two, their kids often have way too easy access to the house, the medicine AND and liquor cabinets for entire weekends.

His other gripe is over the regulating our out-of-control, run-amok skate boarders. I've had run-ins with these little arrogant monsters myself. They'll run into you and/or your car, damage your property then when you try to grab them: "My dad's a lawyer. You touch me and he'll sue you!"

Vandervain defends them like a pit bull, as if their very Founding Father's constitutional rights are under siege. Except wait a minute? Shouldn't traveling on a public paved road BE regulated, have rules as a privilege not a selfish minority right. Of course it already is, for bikes, for motorized vehicles, for even pedestrians-----but he feels that underage children's rights supersede, trump everyone else's.

FACT: Several times in the past few years, drivers or observers tried to grab some of these little bastards to hold them for the police and holy hell broke loose. We just love litigation here in California, where else can a burglar sue the homeowner whose home he invades when the thief felon gets hurt?

I even had one of them aim a pellet pistol at me after I caught several smoking pot and drinking beer beneath my apartment window. I just asked them to move on, it was 11 pm on a school night...great parental supervision, huh? It was too dark to identify them, I came out the next morning to find my car hood dented and three expensive ceramic planter containers irreparably broken.

Vandervain's solution: Leave 'em alone. They have a right to express their freedom, they have a right to ride down our steep slopes without helmets in the dark and endanger surprised and horrified vehicle drivers at intersections on our streets.

And if the kid gets seriously hurt, just whose nerves will be shot, who'll be traumatized from injuring a child, and whose insurance will go up, the driver or the kid's parents?

These little South Park brats, in packs, have in fact confronted and terrified entire neighborhoods, pushed moms in strollers off of city sidewalks, basically forcing the City into passing laws that can cause confiscation and penalties.

As I revealed in my previous column about him 18 months ago, his line of insidious XS® Energy fluids contain doses of synthetic caffeine and extremely high concentrations of synthetic B Vitamins that basically amounts to drug injections. Which fits anything cleverly branded ex-cess-ive.

Which explains why he wants no stricter regulation of either rampaging skateboarding or partying. He has one of only a few horses in the local race: Xs® Energy drinks. And maybe THAT'S the nexus---both activities jeopardize his personal revenue model!

The synthetic B vitamin concentrations in Xs® vary from 40--80 times the daily recommended dosage. Per can. And no one is tracking how many cans our kids are swallowing each day, not the schools, not the parents, nobody.

The synthetic caffeine acts as a delivery accelerant and acuator, facilitating the rapid distribution throughout the body and brain, raising your blood pressure incredibly fast---Hey, whattayaknow, just like methadrine!

Nonetheless, neither major ingredient is of natural organic origin. The human body in fact metabolizes, processes and responds quite differently to inorganic substances. Every adult knows that by now but children aren't being closely monitored and kept away from inorganic stimulants. Kids will try anything once. Or even twice. Or until they get injured or in this case maybe start going hyper-whacko, possibly go into convulsions.

Kids today look for a new or different high just as their parents did in exploratory stupidity before them.

I tried warning my own community when I wrote this column 18 months ago, readers might want to reach back to see that Vandervain hasn't changed his spots:

I got a personal email from Vander-vain after that column sarcastically THANKING me for the free publicity...So a sense of shame is also lacking in his core value tool kit. He's ethically-challenged, maybe from drinking his own product? He's just another crass corporate type, his bottom line isn't the health of the youth in his community, it's how much money he can stuff into his pockets before one of our kids ODs.

When asked about energy drinks caffeine content here's what Vandervain wrote in January of 2012:

"Realistically, energy drinks really are not significantly higher in caffeine than coffee, aspirin tablets, dark chocolate or some soft drinks. As a simple example, a small drip coffee from a popular coffee chain has twice the caffeine of an energy drink."

He goes into detail and arrogantly sticks his own foot further down his fat mouth:

"Who is responsible for teaching kids to behave responsibly? While I don’t feel directly responsible for teaching the children of the world about nutrition, it made sense that an owner of a company who sells a lot of drinks to families would get involved in helping kids get the facts about how daily nutrition impacts their bodies, behavior and lives. I do believe in shared responsibility."

Well, isn't that special? Can you say: "Hypocritical and self-contradictory?" I knew you could. Do as I say, not as I do. If he were up to accepting responsibility he would cease circulating and promoting his medicinal-level dosages to his own community at every available venue. He'd find a way to prohibit the youth of his town from procuring these drinks.

Kids are hooked on this stuff for several reasons: One line of his product are fruity "fixes" for cocktails. So young people get their caffeine and B Vitamin overload rush while assimilating alcohol. Which everybody knows by now is a central nervous system depressant, and has numerous side effects including sleep disorders. As the Yardbirds sang in 1966: "Over, Under, Sideways, Down!"

So it's not a stretch to allege that Xs® is the energy drink equivalent of a speedball: Heroin and cocaine together, two opposite psychological and physiological directions simultaneously. Which makes its distributor more like Nazi human experimentalist Dr. Josef Mengele than a concerned parent.

In that recent column, Count Drinkula's probably lying to CYA and sell more product by appearing responsive, you know like BP®. He makes up a fictional concerned parent in that column, he poses as a concerned vendor and then ignores not only the science behind synthetic caffeine but doesn't address the cumulative, the synergistic affects on young people regarding the humungous B vitamin/caffeine combo. Lies of omission don't change the facts.

Synthetic caffeine is made by a chemical synthesis of urea as the raw material and can also be exposed to a number of harsh chemicals including: Methylene chloride, ethyl acetate and carbon dioxide. It is many times more powerful than the naturally occurring type found in coffee and tea. The body therefore reacts more quickly, and at times violently so. This is why many now feel that it is a leading contributor to behavioral shifts and even death.

FACT:
You cannot find one legitimate licensed and credible physician who supports such gross ingestion of both B vitamins and caffeine simultaneously. B vitamins are sometimes injected sometimes in the presence of, under the direct physical care of a medical doctor for alcohol rehab or illnesses. It's dangerous. Actually, you can't find one doctor that would prescribe such self-treatment period---it can induce convulsions, even strokes. Yes, they give jolts of epinephrine (adrenalin) for heart attack victims in distress, but yes it's also true that many forms of street speed like crack cocaine have it as a critical component. That's why the DEA monitors large purchases of it.

Laguna Beach 2011 Patriot's Day Parade Promo
A Communist Party Knockoff Promo by Xs®

I say he's a hypocritic because he's made a fortune from selling (dispensing for gross profit) what physicians and parents are finally addressing due to mounting evidence: Energy drinks, laden with bizarre and poorly researched chemical additives, loaded with synthetic caffeine, are unregulated by the government and becoming abused like the known harder drugs. Kids don't need to break into the family medicine cabinet for Mother's little helper, or into Dad's shaving kit, golf bag or glove compartment. They just need a few $$$ and time on their hands.

These drinks are being guzzled by unknowledgeable, as yet unformed young bodies and brains that are not prepared to be dosed with the gamut of chemicals and in the concentrations they're ingesting. If they slam down 2-3 cans then they're amped and irrational. Hell, even an adult would be. Human tests like those performed in the FRS study indicated gastrointestinal and blood pressure side effects.

Vandervain still has his pet James (Lame-o) Pribram, the failed Ego-Warrior, on his arm (or is it on a leash) these days for promo ops---He just doesn't pay him to my knowledge. And aging, over-the-hill, pitiful James still pretends to be a professional surfer, but since he never made a dime on the pro circuit we all call him "A wannabe that never was." If you watched MTV, you've seen how we pop these phonies out in multitudes like, well, like an Xs® assembly line.

And how do you top Vandervain's gall, massaging the most ludicrous, the most insultingly inappropriate ad ever published or placed in our papers? Energy drink pinkos of the world unite!

America, the FDA and disturbed suspicious parents are waking up to the dangers of these poorly researched energy products. Their marketing, their positioning and brand recognition exploit the young. And subsequently, our youth, unfortunately, are already more awake than they ever needed to be.

FYI: If a project near you has some interesting enviro-aspect(s) that you think is/are worthy of Salem-News.com coverage and our readers attention, feel free to contact me with a very brief synopsis. Water-related “Blue Interventions” are my specialty!

Launched in 2010, Odd Man Out is the creation of Roger Bütow and his OMO columns are written exclusively for Salem-News-com. Born and raised in the LA Harbor area, son of a German immigrant father, he moved to Orange County in 1965 and has lived in Laguna Beach since 1972. In 1998, he began his professional career in environmental review processes (CEQA, NEPA, MND, MND and EIR/EIS). He's a rare mix of cross-trained builder, writer and consultant as he brings his extensive construction experiences dating back to 1972 into his eco-endeavors. He has tremendous field and technical expertise in successful watershed restorations, plus wastewater, urban runoff, water quality monitoring/improvements and hydrologic mechanisms. He's built everything from commercial spas to award-winning private residences, and provided peer review and consultant analyses for single homes, subdivisions and upscale resorts.

His resumé is extensive, try an online GOOGLE search of his personal journey and historical accomplishments. His consultation fees are reasonable and if you've got a major project that alarms you, that needs creative intervention, then he's your man. His credentials and "CV" can be provided upon request.

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Roger E. Bütow December 5, 2012 5:50 pm (Pacific time)

I received a personable "Thank You" email from a high echelon staff member @ the LB Unified School District. I also ran into one of the long term School District Board members...both read the column and are mulling over my request to place it on the Board's agenda soon.
The District began the prohibition of these things on campus just recently, but there appears to be a wider concern in the community that what I wrote is unfortunately all too true: These ubiquitous, unregulated substances are sheltered by vague and ambiguous laws. Their availability venues (stores, etc.) are the only point where concerned physicians and parents can effectively limit usage.
Because Xs® is part of AMWAY (Quixtar) nutrient and vitamin line, it's hard to track due to MLM marketing techniques. No one but Vandervain knows just how much is being sold and which homes have it in plentitude.

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