Buckfast targeted by US campaign

Buckfast has been mentioned in 5,000 Strathclyde Police crime reports in the past five years

Buckfast, the tonic wine made by monks that has been at the centre of a controversy over Scotland’s problems with drink and crime, has been highlighted as a “worst product” by campaigners in the US.

The tonic wine, mentioned in 5,000 Strathclyde police crime reports in the past three years, is already under fire from Scottish politicians for containing about 375mg of caffeine per litre.

Now it has been branded as the “worst caffeinated product” of 2010 by the Caffeine Awareness Association (CAA) in the US. But Buckfast’s makers accused the CAA of jumping on the bandwagon, after a recent BBC documentary that blamed the tonic wine for crime.

Marina Kushner, the CAA’s founder, said: “If you consume more than one gramme [of caffeine] you can receive irregular heartbeats, panic and anxiety disorders, muscle twitching, incoherent speech, excessive urination, flushed skin, and depression.”

Buckfast and other high-caffeine alcoholic drinks would be banned under Labour plans raised in the Scottish Parliament. But Jim Wilson, a spokesman for Buckfast’s distributors J. Chandler, said: “There’s no evidence mixing alcohol and caffeine makes people more drunk.