RICHMOND, Va. — So called “look-alike” beverages could pose a risk to your child’s health and safety, poison specialists are warning over the Fourth of July weekend.
The Virginia Poison Center, operated within VCU Health, shared a post informing about the “packaging of alcoholic beverages can look very similar to everyday drink products.”
Some of these drinks share the names of their non-alcoholic counterparts like Hard Mountain Dew or Sunny D Vodka Seltzers. Both alcohol and non-alcoholic drinks often share colorful, vibrant packaging that mimic each other.
With the addition of new beverages, it is becoming increasingly difficult to discern between soft drinks and hard drinks.
“If you're a three year old and you haven't learned to read yet, or you don't even you know what the letters V-O-D-K-A would translate to you — it sort of looks like the fruit drink that you were given a few days prior,” advised Dr. John Downs, director of the Virginia Poison Center.
As you pack a cooler, make sure that alcoholic products are inaccessible to children and clean up immediately after gatherings or parties to ensure left over alcoholic beverages are disposed of.
Dr. Downs said his center has received a handful calls from parents regarding children who have ingested alcohol but none of the incidents required hospitalizations so far this year.
More often, calls to the poison center are for children who drank alcohol when a parent or caregiver had their back turned away from them.
“If a kid were to grab a shot of vodka, it'd probably burn a little bit. But if it's mixed with other stuff that makes it taste sweet or easy to go down, there's not that sort of negative reinforcement right away,” he stated.
In November 2024, a Michigan lawmaker introduced a bill that would ban retailers with a sales floor exceeding 2,500 square feet from displaying alcohol adjacent to “soft drinks, fruit juices, bottled water, candy, toys, or snack foods if the snack foods portray cartoons or youth-oriented images.”
Dr. Downs also urged parents to choose their words wisely when referring to alcohol while around children.
“Occasionally I've heard parents say something like, ‘That's daddy's juice.’ To a kid, that might not really translate as this is now a forbidden or prohibited substance, because five minutes before then you were saying, ‘This is your juice,’” he explained.
The Virginia Poison Center is staffed with registered nurses 24 hours a day, seven days a week and can be reached at 800-222-1222.
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