It has been with us for centuries, as long as man has been fermenting vegetable matter to produce alcohol, and it is a plague on the human race. Virtually every one of us has friends, relatives or close associates with the disease, or battle the addiction ourselves; although accurate figures don’t exist, estimates of the prevalence of alcohol addiction in the U.S. range between 5 and 12%. Whatever the real figure is, it is a lot, and the disease causes a wide range of problems. For example, close to 50% of all automobile fatalities involve alcohol. Yet the public remains shockingly ignorant about alcoholism, to the detriment and convenience of alcoholics, and the devastation of their families
The ignorance is also profitable to some corporations that are not even officially in the beverage business. The ethics question is, do those corporations knowingly and intentionally encourage and facilitate that ignorance? If so, they have a lot to answer for, and so do government consumer agencies and the media. This ignorance kills.
The corporations in question are those that manufacture mouthwash, specifically mouthwash containing ethyl alcohol. Most Americans don’t know or suspect that mouthwash containing alcohol is a primary tool of the alcoholic’s craft, which is deception. Keeping the progressive disease, a debilitating addiction with genetic roots, hidden from fellow workers and family is a full time occupation, and popular mouthwashes like Listerine, a Johnson and Johnson product, are a godsend. Original formula Listerine is 26.9 percent alcohol, making it approximately 54 proof , though other flavors contain less. This means it is more potent than beer or wine, and comparable to some varieties of hard liquor.
But, you may ask, aren’t Listerine and similar mouthwashes poison? I always thought so, because I read the labels, a typical example of which reads:
“Do not swallow. In case of accidental ingestion, seek professional assistance or contact a Poison Control Center immediately.”
This is effective, all right: effective at putting those who live and work around alcoholics off the scent—literally. The breath of an alcoholic who is drinking mouthwash will smell “minty fresh,” and in the morning, when liquor on the breath is a warning sign even the most trusting associate will notice with alarm, this is wonderful subterfuge. It just never occurs to a non-alcoholic that drinking Listerine or other mouthwashes is a possibility, because the bottle suggests it is poison.
It isn’t, and alcoholics know it isn’t. Drinking mouthwash is openly discussed and joked about at AA meetings, which are, for good reasons, confidential. Occasionally an endorsement of mouthwash drinking appears on the web. Here’s a typical example, from a British website:
“Been drinking Listerine on the streets for ages now, gets you mashed good and proper. Best bit, it’s cheap and makes you smell great. With 4 different colours and flavours, you just can’t get bored with it. Nothing beats going down the park on a Friday night with a bottle of Listerine and getting mashed with your mates. It even comes with that cap which doubles as a shot-glass. My favourite though is Listerine on the rocks you can’t beat that, add an umbrella and your south of the border.”
If you are surprised that anyone could actually drink the mouthwash “for ages” and still be active on the internet, it means one thing: you’re probably not an alcoholic.
There are other benefits of mouthwash for the secret drinker besides the convenient shot glass and the variety of flavors—and, of course, the misleading warning:
- The bottles come in small sizes that can be stored in purses and pockets.
- Mouthwash with alcohol continues to be sold at supermarkets and convenience stores, 24 hours a day, after sales of liquor are prohibited. “Watch the mouthwash aisles on a Saturday night some time,” an alcoholic friend suggested. She was right. There was a run on the shelves, and the purchasers looked like the cast of “Barfly.”
- Most people find the taste of mouthwashes so strong and medicinal that they can’t imagine anyone wanting to drink them. Of course, they aren’t thinking like alcoholic, who do not drink for taste.
- Mouthwash is relatively cheap, and
- If you are under age, you can still buy a jumbo bottle of Listerine without raising a store clerk’s eyebrow.
As I stated at the beginning, the consequences of the mouthwash deception are devastating. Alcoholism is a progressive disease that destroys families, businesses and lives, and recovery is difficult, intermittent, and never-ending. Families of alcoholics have to be vigilant for a recovering family member to have a fighting chance of surviving the illness. The existence of a secret back-door to intoxication, aided and abetted by a false warning that assists secret drinking by deluding non-drinkers, undoubtedly impedes the recovery of thousands and perhaps millions of desperately sick individuals. For many alcoholics, the alternative to recovery is death.
Do mouthwash manufacturers know this? I do not know, but I wonder: how could they not? They see the sales figures, and presumably they know the market; selling mouthwash is, after all, their business. Figures don’t exist, but it seems reasonable to assume that sales to drunks hiding their addiction must account for a significant percentage of profits, meaning that assisting alcoholics in sabotaging their recoveries and fooling their co-workers and families is worth millions of dollars. Would millions of dollars a year in sales motivate a corporation to keep the public in the dark about a widespread and destructive use of its product? Even if families are torn apart, businesses destroyed, and people killed as a result? We know it could, because we have seen other corporations do worse. We can’t know, at this point, if that is what is going on.
If it isn’t, however, then the naivete of mouthwash manufacturers is mind-boggling. They know that their mouthwashes are not poison, but place misleading labels on their products which only convince the consumers who would never dream of drinking mouthwash anyway. Meanwhile, it lets those who do drink it operate in secrecy. Is it possible that this practice, which has been going on for decades, is accidental and innocent? Are there no alcoholics in the families of Pfizer executives and the other companies?
They are not the only entities I wonder about, either. I find it difficult to believe that supermarket chains and convenience stores don’t know that when they sell Listerine to red-faced, homeless people on Saturday nights, they are supplying binges. The media’s failure to inform the public about this phenomenon is also inexplicable. Journalists are not strangers to problem drinking. Why hasn’t this story been in the New York Times? On “60 Minutes”? Where is Dr. Oz? We see alcoholism portrayed in television dramas frequently now, a good thing. Have you ever seen a character drink mouthwash? If it has happened, I missed it, and I watch more TV than is good for me.
This has to stop.
What needs to be done, and what manufacturers and the media have an ethical obligation to do:
1. Manufacturers should begin public service campaigns aimed, not at alcoholics, but at their families and friends, warning them that Listerine and similar mouthwashes are alcoholic beverage substitutes for those who abuse alcohol or have alcohol addiction, and that if they have a recovering alcoholic loved one, friend or worker, they need to be aware of the meaning of that mouthwash bottle the alcoholic is carrying around, and the minty-fresh morning breath.
2. Local television news, cable news, and talk shows should produce features and news segments on the misuse of mouthwash by alcoholics and teens as a liquor substitute.
3. Manufacturers must change the warnings and labels on alcohol-containing mouthwashes so that the people alcoholics need to fool will not be misinformed.
4. Lesislators must change the laws so that purchases of alcohol-containing mouthwashes are covered by restrictions on beer, wine, and hard liquor.
5. Alcoholics should be counseled to reveal the mouthwash dodge to their families before they are in the throes of a relapse.
6. Families of alcoholics should be instructed in Al Anon and elsewhere to be on the look-out for mouthwash abuse as a sign of an alcoholic’s relapse.
Whether through negligence, ignorance, carelessness, irresponsibility or greed, a strange convergence of factors has been aggravating one of the nation’s most serious health and social problems. All that is required to address the problem is information and education. If those who have a responsibility to publicize this information continue to fail to do so, our ethical judgment of them should be harsh. As always, however, the priority is to fix the problem. If mouthwash makers, retailers and journalists won’t do the right thing, we need to do it for them, and fast. We can deal with their conduct later.
Spread the word.
Ethics Alarms 
Fascinating article, Jack. I must confess, it never occurred to me that you could actually drink Listerine or Scope without significant health risks.
I did find this article, which suggests that the elements used to denature the alcohol in Listerine are harmful and possibly even fatal, which does suggest that their warning on the bottle is more than just an attempt to fool people.
Still, I do think that this is a public health issue that the country needs to be more aware of. Even though the alcohol is denatured, it isn’t automatically fatal in quantities that wouldn’t likely poison you with ethanol anyway, although I would be concerned about the possible cumulative effect of some of the denaturing ingredients.
But that isn’t likely to stop an alcoholic, or even slow him down. For years, alcoholics have even turned to methanol in their desperation, despite the fact that it will cause major health problems like blindness and even death. That the risk is orders of magnitude less for mouthwashes like Listerine make it that much more of a concern.
there are only a couple brands that do not make you ill if you ingest more than 16 ozs. Kroger brand is one. Scope will make you sick and extremely flaccid-ulent
21%
You have to drink a boat full of Listerine to get sick.
The dangerous ingredients are all the other stuff, not the alcohol. Think about it: it’s in people’s mouths. If it was dangerous, liability would be serious. It just isn’t poisonous…I’ve asked doctors outright. It’s drinkable alcohol.
The real problem is that millions of alcoholics use this right under people’s noses. Personally, I am inclined to believe the manufacterers know it, and that the label is a clever way to make sure the product serves secret drinkers’ needs, because it accounts for millions in sales. I find this unforgivable, if true—but short of a class actions suit and a smoking gun memo, it would be hard to prove. The alternative is negligence, and that is outrageous too.
Well, to be fair, the denaturing is apparently done in accordance with the Code of Federal Regulations designed to render the alcohol “undrinkable.”
I guess somebody needs to tell the Feds that their regulations need a tweak or two, n’est ce pas? Or perhaps their regulatory scheme needs another look.
I have no doubt that manufacturers are aware their product can be abused. If not, I would accuse them of professional incompetence for not knowing the toxicity level of the denaturing process they use.
I doubt that the manufacturer’s choice of label wording is designed to meet the needs of abusers — what’s the old saying about attributing to malice that which can more easily be ascribed to negligence or ignorance?
Boy, I don’t know. The manufacturers know that the stuff is drinkable, they know people drink it, and they know the label makes people who don’t drink it think nobody can. Maybe it’s ignorance or negligence, but its might convenient when ignorance makes millions. I can’t be the first person who’s thought about this. I think there is grounds for legitimate suspicion. There’s even a cover rationalization: “We can’t publicize that you can drink the stuff: then more people would drink it!”
I’m shell-shocked right now. I never used mouth-wash regularly until recently. And I could swear my breath was getting worse.
Because of this article, I started looking at it, and come to find that Alcohol based mouth-washes will actually dry out your mouth leaving you with worse breath.
I think that’s the motivation for the alcohol in Listerine. They are actually creating the customers and making them rely on the product. I found a non-alcoholic rinse that I’m going to buy after work and see how those results fare. This is pretty ridiculous if Alcohol doesn’t even make the product better. In my opinion right now, it is just a cover.
Amazing story,,,to me, at least. And it’s sold by Johnson and Johnson, who bought Pfizer’s consumer products division three years ago. Saintly J&J, used in many ethics texts as an example of a reflexively ethical company, ever since its total worldwide recall of Tylenol.
Jack, that 10% figure for alcoholics in the U.S. is, depending on how charitable you are, somewhere between misleading and bogus. (I do not, repeat, do not suggest that you or others who rely on such statistics are engaged in any form of deception.) Reliable statistics are nearly impossible to come by, for a whole raft of reasons. First off, there is no one, standard definition of alcholism exists (this results in distinctions like alcoholics v. alcohol abusers).
Second, very few heavy drinkers are actually diagnosed as alcoholics. Sure, a person can be an alcoholic without having been diagnosed as one, same as a person can be tubercular without having been diagnosed as having tuberculosis. But the fact remains that lack of a proper diagnosis complicates the job of figuring out how many people are alcoholics.
Third, there is the problem of the bean counters deciding what is or is not a bean. I’ve met people in the treatment industry who insist that, in essence, all drinkers are alcoholics, some are just further along on the scale than others. In a nation (ours) where three-fourths of the adult population drinks, that’s a lot of alcoholics. Advocates for a cause frequently end up exagerrating the numbers of people affected (again, often unintentionally, but exaggerating nonetheless) because it emphasizes the urgency of their cause.
Long story short, more commonly accepted statistics for how many drinkers are alcoholics run between 6% and 8%.
It should be noted that none of the above in anyway invalidates the essence of your ethical concerns. I only offer them up as a clarification of the actual magnitude of the problem of alcoholism.
Jack, are typo’s unethical? I ask because I sure left a few in my last comment. Sorry. I will try and do better.
Only unethical for me, not for you. I can fix your typos, and will this afternoon.
Thanks Karl. I took one source, and that was stupid, and you are right: there’s no way to know. And alcoholics, who metabolize the substance differently than normal people, are still indistinguishable from plain old problem-drinker drunks, who have an easier time stopping. I’ll fix this.
There is one problem with this argument. The reason mouthwash works is because of the alcohol. The prevention of gum disease, plaque, and other real (as opposed to cosmetic) benefits of these products is because of the alcohol. If you remove it, you will be removing the beneficial aspect of the product.
Alcohols are wonderful antiseptics that kills a wide range of bacteria and viruses. For topical uses, you can use isopropyl alcohol (rubbing alcohol) which is too toxic to drink (just ask Kitty Dukakis), but for a mouthwash it won’t work.
Using denatured alcohol also won’t work. Alcohol is denatured by adding methanol (a cumulative neurotoxin) or benzene (toxic in low doses and a carcinogen).
Wasn’t some kind of mouthwash advertising an alcohol-free variant that wasn’t as harsh of a burn? I don’t doubt there’s some way to make mouthwash without making it alcoholic.
I agree that alcoholism is devastating, and that we need to do a much better job of educating the population about the effects of this disease, but I’m getting hung up on the implication that there is “deception” on the part of the mouthwash manufacturers. Of course manufacturers are aware of the potential for abuse – that’s WHY the label is there in the first place. If manufacturers were under some naive assumption that products were always used exactly as directed, there would be no need for most of the ridiculous warning labels they are forced to put on products.
You’re unhappy with the current label – which any reasonable manufacturer of a liquid that is not intended for consumption – from correction fluid to mouthwash – would put on a bottle. What exactly do you want it to say? “This product may be abused by alcoholics”? The person who is actually seeing the label (the one buying the bottle to drink it) already presumably knows this, since it’s the reason they are buying the product. Likewise, something to the effect of “this product may cause intoxication if consumed” does nothing more than encourage the very kinds of abuse that you claim to want to prevent by alerting those who “would never dream of drinking mouthwash anyway” that it might just be an option. Why would any manufacturer in its right mind give instructions on ways its product could potentially be abused, other than to say “DONT DO THIS!”. You lament that “they know the label makes people who don’t drink it think nobody can” – yes, that is exactly what the label is supposed to do! It’s not for drinking! NOBODY is supposed to drink it.
I’m baffled by the leap that leads you to “it seems reasonable to assume that sales to drunks hiding their addiction must account for a significant percentage of profits” – how exactly would a manufacturer obtain that kind of marketing data, pray tell? Was it really news to you that hard core alcoholics abuse anything with alcohol in it (including vanilla extract, hairspray, sterno, etc.), and how exactly is that is due to a conspiracy of silence on the part of the mouthwash manufacturers? You admit that they’re no dummies, so wouldn’t you think that if your intention was to profit from abuse of your product, the BEST thing to do would be launch a public awareness campaign about the potential for abuse and alert your potential market rather than relying on word of mouth?
I’m not particularly keen on the idea that the clerk at the Piggly Wiggly or 7-11 should be determining whether I am an appropriate consumer for mouthwash either. I don’t see that as part of his or her ethical duty. Even if you want to assume (and I don’t) that a clerk can tell by looking that I am a desperate alcoholic when I come in to buy mouthwash at 3 am – where does that slippery slope end?
Why are the only options “accidental and innocent” naivite on the part of mouthwash companies or an evil conspiracy to perpetuate the abuse of the product? Doesn’t it seem more reasonable and likely that the manufacturers know that a small percentage of consumers abuse the product, but they continue to manufacture the product for the benefit of the vast majority of consumers who don’t (the same way the alcoholic beverage companies do)?
The conclusion that “all that is required to address the problem is information and education” is almost silly. Are you suggesting that alcoholics and those who care about them just don’t know to just say no? Treatment is what is required to address the problem. The lableing issue is just paternalism. We already do all 5 of your proposed solutions for consumable alcohol, but it hasn’t eradicated alcoholism. Those measures used as a panacea have arguably created the very situation that leads alcoholics to consume mouthwash in the first place.
You’re willfully misunderstanding what I wrote, and aggressively misunderstanding. The mouthwash is NOT like Sterno (which is poison), or vanilla extract (which nobody thinks is poison, so if a drunk is carrying it around everyone knows why), nor is it consumed by only “hardcore alcoholics,” NOR is it “poison.” Do you understand? The labels are in fact misleading and untrue, because the the only reason the mouthwash is “not for drinking” is because it is made and sold for another reason (maybe—it is not beyond the realm of possibility that today such mouthwash is designed and marketed and labeled also to meet the needs of secret drinkers. (Cookie dough is not for eating uncooked, but people do it. If Pillsbuty had a label on it that said, “If consumed uncooked, consult a poison center,” that would be an equivilent situation—-and would make the dough a great asset for secret binge eaters. OK, that’s unlikely.) All you have to do to drink it is ignore the label, and all that happens if you do is that you get drunk.Otherwise, it isn’t just sort of like liquor, it is exactly like liquor, with all sorts of flavors.
Education is silly? The information network in places where alcoholics spend time—like AA—spread the information that there is a good, affordable liquor substitute that will fool anyone trying to get you to stop drinking, while the non-alcoholics who are desperately checking the house for hidden bottles are being fooled by an untrue label, put there by a company that knows it is untrue and which benefits financially by the fact that millions of alcoholics drink what it is labeling poison, because they label it poison. What would I have them do? How about tell the truth? “Listerine has a high alcoholic content but is not intended as a beverage. We recommend that underage persons and those with alcohol allergies and addictions be carefully supervised in their purchase and use of this product, because of the dangers of alcohol abuse.”
This is a pretty modest proposal. Make the facts about mouthwash public: IT-ISNT-POISON! It’s like liquor,and is widely used like liquor. The rest will follow, including requring an ID check when someone buys a bottle of Listerine, and maybe even a Sunday ban. I’m sorry if that may inconvenience you when you really, really have that scummy feeling in your mouth, but people are dying—I think it’s a good trade-off.
Your last paragraph is so jaw-droppingly ignorant about the nature of the disease that it explains the rest. No, alcoholics do NOT know how to say no. When they want to drink, they can’t say no. Reasoning has little to do with it.
The bottom line is, can we do something to help the wife of a recovering alcoholic who is relapsing using Listerine, keeping jumbo bottles in plain view in the bathroom and just downing and replacing them. I flagged this problem with a friend. She said,”What? He’s drinking Listerine? Isn’t that poison?” Because of the label. Now he’s recovering, when he could be dead, and only non-alcoholic mouthwash is allowed in the house.
It’s a real problem, with solutions that are substantially addressed by facts. I don’t see what your objection is.
I didn’t misunderstand you (willfully, agressively or otherwise), I just disagree with you. The labels are neither misleading not inaccurate. Mouthwash isn’t meant for consumption. It has ingredients that the FDA has not approved for consumption. That’s the safety instruction that you put on liquids that aren’t meant for consumption. It’s not radical. It’s not deceptive. Most people understand that a liquid you are supposed to swish in your mouth isn’t the same thing as draino – that doesn’t mean it’s perfectly safe to drink.
The label is there to keep people from drinking it. It’s not there as some wink wink conspiracy so that the people who want to drink it can continue to do drink it without the people who don’t want them to drink it to know that they are drinking it. That’s as ridiculous as it sounds.
I object for a few reasons – first because I think the labels – even the modest one you propose – don’t accomplish what you want them to accomplish and have the very real potention to exacerbate the harm you want to prevent. And to the exent that we get caught up in blaming manufacturers and retailers we’re going back to Prohibition-style tactics instead of focusing on treatment. Those didn’t work with alcoholic beverages – what makes you think they will work for people who are so desperate for booze that they are drinking mouthwash? If you don’t already know that your spouse/friend/coworker has a problem with alcohol, those labels aren’t going to mean a thing to you – and the only way they could possibly “help” would be if it contributes to someone getting *treatment*. If you just take away the mouthwash, the vanilla and the sterno will be next. I object to the notion that preventing a symptom will lead to a cure.
It’s not about whether it “inconveniences” me – people aren’t dying from purchasing mouthwash – they’re dying from untreated alcoholism. If blue laws, ID cards or super duper warning labels would do anything to prevent *that* then I would be all for them. But it’s scapegoating to make this an ethical responsibility of a retailer or manufacturer. And I’m not denying that it’s a problem – I’m denying it’s a conspiracy. If your premise were just that it might be a good idea if we had better public awareness of this issue or an additional warning label, that would be one thing, but the title of your post wasn’t “the amazing lack of additional warnings” – you came up with a conspiracy theory worthy of a tinfoil hat.
I never said that education was silly. I said that your assertion that “*all that is required* (emphasis mine) to address the problem is education and information” was silly. All the education and information in the world isn’t going to convince an addict in the grip of addiction, which you seem to recognize in your reply. (Oh, and speaking of misunderstanding, try reading my last paragraph again. I’m comparing your claim that education alone will fix this with the “just say no” tactics that Nancy Reagan promoted – not suggesting that “just say no” is a viable plan).
You’ve made it clear that this is in response to a very personal experience. I’m happy that your friend is getting treatment, but *that’s* what’s saving his life, and that’s where I contend the focus should be.
We live in a media-glutted environment in which the slightest trivia is available in the minutest detail, and yet the vast majority of Americans are completely misinformed on this issue, which has been around for decades.
Yes, absolutely yes, “all that is needed,” in order to address the aspect of the alcoholism problem that I was writing about—not cure alcoholism, not stop problem drinkers from drinking—is to publicize one simple fact, and I’ll say this again, since you seem completely unwilling or unable to process, why, I don’t know: “Listerine and its ilk are 100% usable as alcoholic beverage subsititutes. People who are relapsing from alcoholism and hiding that fact find this wonderfully convenient, because the labels on these products MISLEAD people who could not imagine drinking such stuff into thinking nothing is wrong when they see, for example, a recovering alcoholic taking a purse-size bottle of wash out of their purse.” I don’t think this should be so hard to understand.
Let people know. That is not too much to ask, nor is it too much to ask that those who manufacture these products take responsibility for doing so, nor is it too much to suggest that a responsible media would look into this matter when it bombards us with features on Sarah Palin’s daughter’s idiot ex-fiance and Michelle Obama’s arms.
I’m sorry, but really, spare me the sanctimonious “Liquor doesn’t kill, people who can’t control their alcoholism kill themselves” pablum. I suppose those with recovering alcoholics around should keep their liquor cabinets well-stocked, too. Part of the treatment is to keep recovering alcoholics away from alcoholic beverages. The fact is that there really is no reliably successful treatment. AA has the best record, but it is far from stellar either.True alcoholism is a genetic disease that will not go away—the threat of relapse is always present, and most sufferers do relapse, over and over again. They can’t help it. The first part of the AA recovery plan is for the sufferer to admit that he or she is “powerless” over the disease. That mean it is insane to let an alcoholic go into a liquor store or a bar. The subterfuge over mouthwash means that it is just as insane to let an alcoholic go into a 7-11 or a drug store, even when they carry no “liquor.”
And yes, I think it is suspicious that mouthwash companies have not addressed this issue, and continue to have a misleading label that facilitates a deception (you can’t drink this without getting sick” is what the label appears to say. It is misleading, because it misleads. How do I prove that? It misled ME. I have interviewed nearly a hundred people who expressed shock that anyone could drink mouthwash once, much less repeatedly. This means, by definition, that it is misleading.) that makes them millions of dollars.
Imagine, if you will, a window cleaner—a really good one— that is a perfect substitute for heroin. Junkies know it, but because it is window cleaner, their family members do not, because they read the label, because they see it advertised on TV, and assume that the window cleaner couldn’t be injected without killing you. It isn’t any more dangerous than heroin, however, any more than mouthwash is more dangerous than Thunderbird.
Is the solution to this problem to a) keep things as they are b) ban the window cleaner, c) regulate the window cleaner, or d) make sure everyone knows about the potential misuse of the product?
Your company make millions of dollars from the purchase of this product by junkies. Which of the above will you favor?
In ethics, one of the main objectives is to stop the harm and solve the problem as best as is possible. My alerts on an obscure blog do nothing but, just maybe, lead to another, more effective step. Your response—everything is OK, the real problem is different, you’re advocating prohibition (nonsense),—just helps make certain that the problem is neither recognized, known, or addressed.
And Johnson and Johnson profits. But you’re right: corporations never would keep information from the public to make money—not when the information could save lives.
No, there are many, many brands of non-alcoholic mouthwash. Do they work? I have no idea.
Dear Jack: This is an issue that flew under my radar, for certain. My questions: 1) How many other common domestic products contain high degrees of potentially drinkable alcohol? 2) Can mouthwash work effectively without it? 3) Do existing liquor laws potentially apply to mouthwashes? 4) Just how widespread is the use of mouthwashes as intoxicants… and among what demographics? 5) Is it practical to keep any such product off the market or severely restrict its use because some indigents or clueless kids might abuse it? (Think glue!) As an “aging baby boomer” (who’s seen plenty of impaired or destroyed lives through substance abuse) I’m second to none in wanting to keep intoxicating chemicals out of the hands of such people- young ones in particular. Somewhere along the line, though, adults have to take responsibility for their actions and kids have to be mentored by adults who understand what the word “parenting” means. One thing, though. If these mouthwash producing companies HAVE been getting a pass by the law, then it needs to cease. Regards. SMP
Steven: I’d answer this way: mouthwash is the only substance I can find that is widely available, flavored, in the range of alcohol content of typical beverages, affordable, and, most important of all, mislabeled as poison. I am not advocating banning mouthwash. All I an recommending is eliminating the subterfuge that allows it to fly under the radar of those monitoring alcoholics. As of now, existing liquor laws do not apply to mouthwashes.
We don’t know, nor can we (since, for example, AA is 100% anonymous and confidential) how many alcoholics drink mouthwash. I have been told by people who have personal experience that it is very, very common, and the cleaning out of the mouthwash aisle on weekend, which I have confirmed several times, supports this.
Maybe it was a mistake to raise the underage drinking issue, which is separate from the more critical alcoholic problem. At least those kids will know one can drink Listerine, in case they have an alcoholic in their life later on.
In Colorado, state liquor laws would limit the sale of Listerine and other alcoholic mouthwash to liquor stores. In Utah, those would be state run liquor stores. In CO, we have a law that says you (or a company) can only hold one liquor store license. So there is one Costco that can sell liquor, one Target, one Walmart, etc.
I found these comments on a site:
I drank two bottles of scope and ended up having a seizure and in the hospital. Was in intensive care for two days and total stay of four. I developed antral gastritis with internal bleeding. It works in a pinch, like a shot or two. Don’t forget about cooking vanilla, make sure to check the label. It’s thirty five per cent alcohol, drinkable alcohol.
and this one
i too had a problem with alcohol in the past. my last year or two of college were pretty depressing and i kind of just shut everyone out of my life and started drinking heavily.
many times i tried to stop but the withdrawal is really rough- a true alcoholic knows the feeling and will risk long term health just to get rid of those short term withdrawal feelings. this is the condition i was in when i resorted to drinking mouthwash a couple of times, and it’s precisely when i realized how serious my problem had become and decided to tackle it once and for all.
if you’re not a drunk like i was, DON’T by any means become one and have to drink that crap to avoid seizures, hallucinations, etc. if you are a drunk and have terrible anxiety when you are sober, it’s a strange thing to say but just get your hands on some real booze meant for drinking and don’t quit cold turkey before you can get medical help. that’s probably better than both trying to quite all at once and/or drinking mouthwash.
as for the mouthwash, it’s relatively notorious for it’s ability to intoxicate. alcoholics often take bottles to work and drink some amounts during the day because they are withdrawing until 5pm hits and they can get to the bar and no one really notices they are actually ingesting the stuff. believe it or not, there are ways to get drunk/high without needing to show id, this is why so many young kids drink cough syrup, mouthwash, or things like peppermint extracts (this is impossible to get down, btw)
as opposed to what some people are saying on here (don’t have to comment if you don’t really know the answers, btw), the alcohol in mouthwash is ethanol- the stuff in beer,liquor. but it has other harmful stuff in it like benzoic acid- anyone who’s taken a college chemistry course knows that it is poisonous if ingested.
if you’re really wondering about getting drunk with stuff meant to kill bacteria in your mouth, i strongly recommend that you either just forget about it or find the means to get actual drinking alcohol if you really have to have a fix.
Tim: These are good additions. Thanks! Two bottles of Scope at once would make anyone have a seizure. You have to drink an awful lot of benzoic acid to be poisoned. (Alcohol is, after all, a poison too, in sufficient quantities.)
Jack, all I can say is this was unique content! I’ll stick to my Shiraz, thank-you. Seriously, I had never heard of any of this.
Jack,
If anything, you misunderstood Lori’s point, but that’s another issue. No one (and I mean NO ONE) thinks mouthwash is poison; nor is it employed solely or even mostly by alcoholics. Kids have been trying to buy mouthwash for years as a way of getting around drinking laws (with limited success as some business have taken to IDing). Would you rather the warning label say: “BEWARE! POTENTIAL FOR ALCOHOLISM INSIDE” ?
Almost any consumer product, if used incorrectly, has the potential for abuse (spray paint, pressurized air cans, cleaning fluids, and even household plants). Should they ALL be made illegal or had restrictions placed on them? Loathe as I am to employ the slippery slope argument, Lori has a point — where does it end? Blue laws (atleast in Texas) are beyond silly and, moreover, have had little to no effect on the overall sobriety of the public.
What you’re advocating seems like prohibition all over again and would fail just as stupendously. Are you really advocating more useless legislation? If so, this is an increasingly worrisome trend for the Scoreboard ..
-Neil
Neil, I can guarantee you that LOTS of people think mouthwash is poison, in the sense of “if you drink it, it makes you sick.” I did, most people I have spoken to think that. “Mouthwash? Yuck! Who would drink that?” Especially classic Listerine. But it is no more sickening than Tequilla.
Find one sentence in my post that advocated making any kind of mouthwash illegal. I’ll be waiting.
I said, and I continue to say, that 1) we need for the public to be made aware that mouthwash is a widespread, convenient, largely unknown (among non-drinkers) substitute for alcoholic beverages, and 2) once that is known, it should seem pretty stupid to let kids walk out of 7-11’s and CVS’s carrying Listerine when they shake down anyone who looks less than 30 for trying to buy a wine spritzer.
Meanwhile, I’ll give you the phone number of a spouse of an alcoholic, who innocently picked up jumbo bottles of mouthwash for him thinking he was on the wagon, for months, and only learned that he had been drinking them after he lost his job for being drunk at work.
And I’ll keep waiting for the quote from advocating banning anything. Then I’ll decide whether you or Lori read more carefully.
Sorry, Jack.
Listerine probably deserves its poison label. I do not believe the labeling is deceptive.
There are different types of denatured alcohols and specially denatured alcohols and hundreds of formulas for making them. Manufacturers are prohibited from using toxic denatured alcohol in a product meant to be consumed or which might be consumed. And it would just be stupid to put poisonous denatured alcohol in mouthwash or to use one of the formulas that makes the alcohol taste nasty.
But just because the alcohol isn’t poison, doesn’t mean the active ingredients are not toxic.
I am providing links to the Material Safety Data Sheets for the ACTIVE ingredients in Listerine. Alcohol is not one of them.
MSDS methyl salicylate (This ingredient is the scariest.)
http://www.jtbaker.com/msds/englishhtml/m7257.htm
MSDS menthol
http://www.sciencelab.com/msds.php?msdsId=9924607
MSDS thymol
http://www.sciencelab.com/xMSDS-Thymol-9927623
I could not find an MSDS for eucalyptol. Sections 3 and 11 of the MSDS are the important ones. I am also providing links to a couple of other interesting documents I used for reference.
Click to access Denatured%2520Alcohol.pdf
Click to access 27cfr20.136.pdf
Deb: the label may be literally accurate, but it is misleading, because it gives the impression that Listerine, et al. cannot be regularly consumed in fairly large quantities without ill effects. It can. No question: it is the non-alcohol elements that are the problem. Again: If the label doesn’t stop people who do dink the stuff, and throw those off the track who are responsible for stopping loved ones and consumers from drinking it, then it’s a bad label. Please don’t tell me why the label can be justified: it not only doesn’t work, it makes a problem worse. What’s your solution?
Jack,
After a couple of days, I don’t necessarily agree about the focus of the article. Mouthwash is only a component of the larger issue – which is consumable denatured alcohol. We don’t have to make it known that some mouthwash products contain alcohol – we have to make it known that alcohol can be consumed in ways other than alcoholic beverages.
My local grocery store is limited to 3.2 beer. So anything in there that has alcohol that is greater than 3.2 beer is a part of the misunderstanding/misconception/deception. 1) Mouthwash. 2) Vanilla Extract. 3) Cooking Wine. 4) Hairspray. 5) Aftershave. 6) NyQuil.
While the public should be aware about “NBE” (Non Beverage Alcohol), I would hope that NBE was specifically and emphatically discussed with any friends and relatives of a recovering alcoholic.
Sorry. I meant Non Beverage Ethanol
Tim: there is a larger problem, I agree. But surely you see why mouthwash is different than the rest:
1) You do drink Nyquil. It’s use by alcoholics is well-documented. If someone is drinking it and isn’t sick, you know why.
2) Cooking wine is wine. Ditto. Nobody would be surprised to learn a wino drank it.
3) Hairspray and aftershave is not put in the mouth in normal use, and people don’t carry aftershave around with them.
4)Vanilla extract. Again, well publicized, and not called “a poison.” It comes in teeny bottles—if your spouse comes home with 20 bottles of extract, obviously something is amiss. A jumbo bottle of Listerine? Just a bargain.
Sometimes dealing with a macro-issue allows a serious micro-issue to hide in the grass, and this is such a case.
This string of comments is depressingly educational. It shows how easy it is to be misunderstood, even when you’re being PERFECTLY clear. Jack argues that the Listerine label is deceptive and should be revised. No mention of reformulating or outlawing Listerine or taking any action against J&J. Perfectly clear.
Yet so many misread him. Intentionally? To what end? No, I imagine that most of the misreaders are honest but careless. Just goes to show how poorly people read or listen.
I broke up with a high functioning alcoholic about a year ago. He had a well-paying job and didn’t binge. He would drink his mouthwash every so often not because he was desperate but because it was there in his mouth. I think it was a leftover habit from when he was teen and alcohol was harder to come by.
This is so long after your debate, it hardly seems worth posting, but I just wanted you all to know that I am a recovering alcoholic whose drink of choice was Listerine, and yes, for all the reasons you list here. It would have been GREAT if the nature of Listerine was more widely known, because I just walked around in my little private hell for years and years, hardly believing no one suspected.. I just couldn’t take it anymore and asked for help, and then had a hell of a time staying stopped, in part because I knew I could “get away’ with it. I am a college prof. I am well-respected. If it were general knowledge, I probably would have gotten help sooner. And I have to tell you, I have NOT heard about it much in AA, either. I talk about it and even my fellow drunks say “Why?” It is great to read this article and to know I am not alone…
Thanks so much for your comment, and congratulations on your sobriety—keep up the good work. The Listerine factor is still much neglected, and with tragic results. I wish I had the traffic to get the word out better, but everything helps. I;m graetful to for adding your perspective and experience.
My husband is an addict. He has been gone for almost a year… Jail, rehab and a halfway house. While considering whether to let him come home or not, I’ve been trying to learn more about signs and behaviors of addicts/alcoholics. I mistook years of signs for just odd behavior. I never would have thought about mouthwash. Very informative! The only reason I even googled this subject was I saw a man down half a bottle of mouthwash on an episode of Weeds (season 6)… More homework, of course. Another strange thing you wouldn’t think of; I wondered for 6 months why my husband was so obsessed with bath salts. He bought these little packages constantly and would “take baths” all the time. Found out he was cooking them and shooting up with it. People inject/ingest/snort certain brands. From what I understand, they purposely make them to be used as a drug substitute and label them as bath salt. How do companies and retailers get away with distributing and selling these products?!
This is a very interesting article. I’m a woman in my early twenties battling a war with alcohol. My medication is a godsend and kicks my add to the curb, but as it wears off, the anxiety is unbearable and I’ve begun an unusual dependence on alcohol in this situation. If I do not take my add med, I’m fine. I pig out more than usual and don’t feel the need to smoke as much either. It’s a love hate situation. I am one year from being 21 and this secret I’ve kept hidden scares me. I have resorted to mouthwash at times when my hook ups would not pull through. It does get you drunk but you have to continuously drink it within a short period otherwise you just get the weird side effects from the other ingredients. The first time I tried, I took a big gulp, noticed my anxiety lessened and searched the Internet like crazy for some closure. All I read were one times, or wives complaining about husbands using it, and only found one death story. It got worse and when I don’t have real alcohol I’ll resort to mouthwash. It’s horrible and I’m disgusted with myself. You say it’s not poisonous? Well the bottle I have certainly states that if more than used is swallowed blah blah. But it doesn’t even have ‘warnings’ as the title headline. It’s a generic cheaper brand.. I’ve read all the comments and I’m not going to take sides. But if I had to… I lean towards the author of the article. There are alot of hostile aggressive like feedback comments I saw which stated good points but were just.. A bit much. Have you really been a user of mouthwash in the past? How much would you consume in a night? I have heard bad things about thymol. But sometimes the feelings I feel from my wearing of meds makes me reach for anything to make me calm down.