Alcohol awareness groups are sounding the alarm on a new category of alcoholic beverages they say are marketed to teenagers: energy drinks containing alcohol.

Sold under the brand names Rock Star 21, Sparks, Bud Extra and Tilt, they look very much like the non-alcoholic energy drinks popular among the 12 to 20-something age group.

And like the non-alcoholic versions, the spiked drinks also contain high amounts of sugar, caffeine and the stimulants guarana and ginseng. Add malt liquor, and you have an easy-to-guzzle concoction that acts as a stimulant and depressant simultaneously.

Critics say the effects of the stimulants have the effect of keeping the drinker more “awake” and drinking more for a longer period.

The alcohol content in the drinks ranges from 6 to 8 percent. For comparison, a can of Coors Light beer has an alcohol content of 4.15 percent

“We think it’s pretty scary,” said Pete Schulberg, spokesman for the Oregon Partnership, a non-profit drug and alcohol awareness group. “There is no question in our minds these products are being marketed to the same people who are buying energy drinks. And those people are teenagers and people in their early twenties,” he said.

Companies that make the beverages, including Anheuser-Busch and Miller Beer, deny deliberately marketing to underage drinkers.

However, in a May 10, 2007 letter to the CEO of Anheuser- Busch, August A. Busch IV, attorneys general from 29 states (including Oregon) admonished the company for its marketing practices and warned of the risks of combining alcohol with highly-caffeinated energy drinks.

“A responsible marketing plan,” the letter said, “would include a warning about the risks of mixing energy drinks with alcohol and would ensure that each product was packaged in containers large enough to display warnings legibly and to deter concealment by underage youth.”

After receiving that letter and pressure from advocacy groups, Anheuser-Busch stopped productions of Spykes, a malt-liquor based, fruit-flavored drink critics said were designed to appeal to underage drinkers. However, the product reportedly also had disappointing sales.

The Oregon Partnership is urging parents to become educated about these alcoholic energy drinks and would like to see them eliminated.

“Now is the time to act when these products are new,” Schulberg said, “because once they become established economically, it’s going to be a lot tougher for the Budweisers and the Miller Beers of the world to pull these products.”