Pharma companies would already have a caffeine equivalent that would be only slightly different in structure so it would circumvent the law. It would then be sold at exorbitant prices and people would still pay even with the side effect of sometimes you eat someone's face. Of course they would then sell you something else to stop the side effects. You would also have the caffeine purists who would start their own speak easies and organized crime. People "abiding by the law" would start calling the purist, plants, since that is where caffeine is coming from, while the synthetic caffeine users would be called zombies for the obvious face eating reasons. This whole thing would cause even greater divides between already split countries leading to all out war. WWIII plants vs zombies.
That would require passing a law to ban both tea and coffee. And who do you think will bother to sit through a meeting without tea or coffee to even discuss such a bill?
Have you ever had coca tea? It's amazing - way better than caffeine. It's more gentle, but stronger - like it gives you more energy, but you don't get a hard crash, it's less likely to make it hard to sleep, plus it has all sorts of health benefits - being able to adjust to high altitude for one
Cocaine probably shouldn't be sold at the drug stores, but it would be amazing if we treated it like caffeine - you need a license to buy it, but you can get the leaves or products made for it
Plus we could make a path to legitimize cartels and stop getting people killed over the the war on drugs, which would be nice
Any government which makes caffeine illegal must be prepared to enforce that law with mass violence, or let it be ignored.
Given how unlikely your average cop is going to enforce a law they regularly brea... Oh, nevermind. Yeah it'd be a shit show. Demonstrations, arrests, black markets, the whole nine yards.
This eventual solution would likely bring to mind Bunny Colvin's "paper bag" speech from the wire
Somewhere back in the beginning of time, this district had itself a civic dilemma of epic proportions. The city council had just passed a law that forbade alcoholic consumption in public areas; on the streets and on the corners. But the corner is, it was and it always will be the poor man's lounge. It's where a man wants to be on a hot summer's night. It's cheaper than a bar. Catch a nice breeze and watch the girls go on by. But the law is the law so what are the western cops gonna do? They arrest every dude for tipping back a High Life, there'd be no time for any other kind of police work. And if they look the other way, they open themselves up to all kinds of flaunting, all kinds of disrespect. Now, this is before my time but somewhere back in the 50's or the 60's, there was a moment of goddamn genius by some nameless smokehound who comes out the Cut-Rate one day and on his way to the corner he slips that just bought pint of elderberry into a paper bag. A great moment of civic compromise. That small wrinkled ass paper bag allowed the corner boys to have their drink in peace and gave us permission to go and do police work. The kind of police work that's actually worth the effort, that's actually worth taking a bullet for.
Tell me about it. My coffee machine suddenly broke down the past weekend and I've had such a bad week. I tried red bull as a replacement but an energy drink in the morning is just weird. I then tried English breakfast tea which was nice in its own way but I still felt down during the day.
Yesterday I was feeling so off that I even tried alcohol because maybe being numb would help?
Today I'm feeling much better. Now this sound like it's one hell of a drug, and I can't for sure tell if it's just the lack of caffeine or overall bad habits plus somewhat of a small depression hit this week which made all of it so bad. But yea I was really not feeling this week, and I can't wait until my fixed machine arrives on Monday.
A small piece of advice, don't go drinking waterfalls of coffee when you get your machine back. Stick to the rivers and lakes your body is used to.
Without the Destiny's Child reference, it's like a recovering opioid addict who's fallen off the wagon. Your body isn't used to the amount of coffee you drank two weeks ago. So drink less than you did. Also if you want to save money could be a great time to moderate your caffeine intake altogether, since you're already basically done the hardest part.
Nicotine is definitely addictive, but it's not nearly as addictive as a whole cigarette - cigs have more than just nicotine that's addictive and some of those things are more addictive than nicotine.
Michael Pollen wrote a audible book about how modern capitalism wouldn't have been possible without the invention of the light bulb and the abundance of caffeinated beverages as it facilitated a 24 hour economy. Literally titled Caffeine: How Caffeine Created the Modern World.
So what would happen if the government illegalized caffeine? I'd say they'd be more likely to prohibit literally any other drug including alcohol and tobacco. But if I were to indulge this hypothetical scenario, I'd say other new stimulants without any legal status would be invented to replace caffeine.
Caffeine doesn't require a laboratory or manufacturing operations. It can come from plants. What would happen is people start growing and developing an underground caffeine distribution network and underground caffeine import network from countries that aren't dumb.
Weed users are less than 20% of the US population and that was a shadow industry bigger than most legal industries. Compare to 60% drink coffee every day, then there's tea drinkers and of other caffeinated beverages; people would riot and/or go underground to get their caffeine.
Like "you get a fine" illegal, or "you go to jail" illegal, or "Judge Dredd executes you in the street for possessing stimulants" illegal? If the punishment is light or the risk is low, many people probably just keep using it, like alcohol during Prohibition. If there's a harsh punishment and the risk of actually being punished is high, there might be riots.
People would suddenly realize it’s better to go to bed earlier and sleep longer than hitting snooze 5 times and needing that energy boost every morning. Who am I kidding, people would revolt.
Same thing that happens with most drugs. It'll still get in, prices will skyrocket, and it'll be laced with fentanyl so instead of enjoying a nice cup of coffee, you'll die because the government tried to tell you what you can do to your own body again.
It would also be a very dark night, as every IT system in the world would crash. Bringing down power grids, and infrastructure systems everywhere. I have yet to work in an IT department which wasn't staffed completely with caffeine junkies (myself included). You want your blinken lights working? Give us the caffeine and no one gets their data routed to /dev/null.
Its a bittering agent. Though I'll admit the mild psychotropic effects are probably why we use it instead of the myriad other things that are just as bitter and probably safer to consume overall.
If people couldn't find alternatives and caffeine wasn't illegally available...
Many people who need coffee to function in the morning would lose their shit. Overworked people and workers with really long shifts will not be able to keep up. People would probably fall asleep at work.
This made me realize people would probably fall asleep while driving and cause unusably congested highways all across the country, potentially causing supplies shortages.
Everyone would be miserable at first, so you wouldn’t want to be out in public for the first week or so, then after the withdrawal subsided it would be more or less back to normal. I went off caffeine for a while, once you get over the hump you realize you don’t actually need it as much as you thought.
Well, without caffeine i would turn into an ax wielding murderous psychopath. Humanity would seize to exist, nature would heal and the world would rebuild itself. Lizards would become the dominant species and tadaaaa!
The software industry would stall out, mass unemployment, dramatically more car crashes. Coffee, black and green tea, most soda, and some drugs would disappear from shelves and stores. Coffee shops would all close, you'd be able to get pretty much just water with your big Mac, midol takers would be furious and in pain, ADHD people would have to try harder to fall asleep. For lack of a better term, there would be a rubber band effect apocalypse while the shadow markets got set up and supplies
For some it helps them fall asleep. I had a friend in HS who would drink a monster before bed. I have a friend who currently only has coffee after 5pm to make sure they don't fall asleep earlier. It's anecdotal for sure but it works for them