Canada's crackdown on energy drinks no match for influencer hype, parents and teachers warn
CBC Every year, Juliet Brown watches teenagers cluster together and one-up each other about who got the least amount of sleep the night before. Later, between classes, she'll watch as the same groups buy energy drinks from a nearby gas station to fight off heavy eyes.
"There seems to be this celebration of fatigue like, 'Oh, I stayed up until 3:00. Well, I stayed up until 4:00,' " said Brown, a high school educator in Burnaby, B.C., with three children of her own.
"Then if you add energy drinks or something with that caffeine, you've got a perfect storm of kids who are both tired and overstimulated."
Brown is among the parents who say they're glad to see Canadian officials seemingly cracking down on caffeine-loaded energy drinks, but who also agree pulling the drinks offshelves won't beenough any recalls need to be paired with tighter rules and a better understanding of influencer marketing if they're going to make a dent ina billion-dollar market.
"That's the huge mountain for us to be climbing," said Brown.
