The government is forcing a craft brewery to change the name of its 'LSD Ale'

(Image credit: Chris Ratcliffe/Getty Images)

last updated 12 April 2016

Indeed Brewing's LSD Ale doesn't contain any illegal drugs: The 'LSD' acronym stands for the lavender, sunflower honey, and dates used to make the seasonal craft brew. That doesn't matter to federal regulators, however, who forced the Twin Cities-based brewery to change the beer's name before permitting it to be sold across state lines.

"We tried to find a way we could keep it on the label, like could we spell out the words and just bold the first letters," Whisenand added, "but unfortunately we sell a regulated product and there's not much you can do when the feds say no." Brewers who make beers that reference marijuana — and there are a lot of them — have been subject to similar scrutiny: Lagunitas Brewery even named a beer its "CENSORED ale" after its original name, The Kronik, was nixed by the feds.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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