Frappa What?

Brandon Ancier

Frappa...what?

At the site of my old favorite hangout, The Pannikan, I walk in to a newly restored building with a brightly lit green sign on the front. Although the layout is the same, the wood floors are shining with a fresh coat of lacquer, and an enormous rack of paraphernalia hangs upon the recently installed shelves. I make my way up to the once short line, that now, is about fourteen people long. After waiting for a while, and watching the busy soccer moms and young college students circulate through the chain of events required to get their drinks, my turn finally comes up. Just in time, I figure out what exact combination of new age mumbo has to spew out of my mouth so I can get a freaking large cup of coffee. It came out to be something in the order of: "Vente Regular Blend (No Foam)." What the hell that means I'll never know. What ever happened to the good old days when one could walk up to the counter, ask for a cup of coffee, and receive a oversized cup that could be refilled till the hearts was content. Those days are gone. The small time coffee shops, like The Pannikin, are being over run by those fast talking, foam guzzling psychos from Seattle. You might know them as Starbucks. Although many people enjoy having Starbucks in their neighborhoods, they harm they inflict upon the communities people and business' doesn't outweigh the benefits.

Popping up in every nook and cranny of the nation, Starbucks can't be stopped. From it's home town of Seattle to the bustling city of Fitchburg, Wisconsin, an entire population has become hooked, no addicted, to this chain of commercialized coffee shops. 292 Starbucks exist in Illinois alone . The product their pushing does not compare with your average cup of joe, however. Caffeine, Caffeine, Caffeine, in amounts large enough to make the turtle faster than the hare. This stimulant, designed to replace cocaine is beginning to be abused as much as alcohol. Consuming caffeine on a regular basis leads to an addiction. Without their morning jolt, caffeine users feel tired and irritable all day. Similar to cigarettes and nicotine, the more caffeine people have the more they need it. With Starbucks available in almost every part of the US, they are becoming the largest legalized drug dealer in the nation, second only to the infamous Phillip Morris.

To those who argue against the statement claiming nicotine and caffeine are drugs, I ask you this. Why do you believe that marijuana is a drug, but these substances aren't? Maybe its because our government says marijuana is illegal, but doesn't wave a finger at those other "drugs". In Amsterdam, although marijuana is legal, most still consider it a drug. Maybe these people don't want to believe caffeine and nicotine are drugs, because that would make them, god forbid, drug users. From the toddler drinking Robitussin to the leukemia patient getting chemotherapy, we all use drugs. America must stray away from the concept that a drug is a bad thing. All drugs have good and bad attributes. People think that because a drug is legal it can't be that bad for them. Starbucks perpetuates this problem by making their drinks as sweet as they do.

It used to be that most children under the age of fourteen hated the taste of coffee. Some didn't like it till college, while others never liked it at all. The Starbucks Frappuccino, with its three hundred percent of your daily dose of sugar per cup, has changed all that. Now most kids over five can enjoy the pleasures of caffeine without the horrible taste of coffee. Just last week, I watched as a mom took orders from her three kids, all between the ages of five and thirteen, at the Starbucks counter. I looked on in awe as the children