The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Nov. 7 noted that alcohol commercials reached one in four children in the 25-largest TV markets. This article from the alcohol research news archive looks at the impact of ads on young people and how the ads -- especially in sports broadcasts and events -- may contribute to underage drinking and other legal, social or health problems.
Doctors in Ireland are demanding a ban on alcohol sponsorship of sporting events, warning the beverage alcohol industry is “grooming child drinkers.” Sporting bodies are “very much in the alcohol industry’s pocket,” a communications regulatory committee was told April 17 by representatives of the College of Psychiatrists of Ireland (CPI).
The proposed ban is similar to smoking advertising bans in the United States, which forced a sponsorship change for NASCAR's top racing series from the Winston Cup to the Sprint Cup.
Dr. William Flannery of the CPI said the alcohol industry was targeting adolescent children and advertising was linked to the early onset of alcohol use disorders – alcohol abuse and the disease of alcoholism. Medical and youth advocacy groups in the U.S., where one in four minors are drinking (see related examiner article), are watching developments in Ireland and other countries while pushing for similar sports advertising bans in the U.S.
Alcohol companies spent more than $1 billion on U.S. sports sponsorships and advertising in 2012, from local events to the Super Bowl. If such a ban is successful in the U.S., it would challenge how professional sports and broadcasters generate revenue. For example, Chicago's Rock and Roll half marathon would have to replace official sponsor Michelob Ultra. Nearby, Milwaukee's Miller Park may need to seek a new naming-rights partner other than the Miller-Coors brewery a half mile away in the cradle of America's beer industry.
U.S. alcohol industry watchdog Alcohol Justice has sports advertising in its crosshairs. Their Free Our Sports Youth Film Festival project, which honored it's winners this month, is a call to eliminate alcohol advertising, sponsorships, branding and promotions from every sport. Each entry from youth aged 10-20 generated letters targeting the CEOs of the three top alcohol producers, demanding that they stop using sports events to promote alcohol consumption.
According to the group, “As alcohol-marketing tactics increase in complexity and frequency, they significantly influence youth expectations and attitudes, creating an environment that promotes underage drinking.” Alcohol Justice points to a 2004 survey showed that 75 percent of adults back a ban of alcohol advertising in youth-oriented media, including sports broadcasts.
“There is no product on the planet that could cause children more harm,” CPI's Flannery said. "They are the real targets of alcohol sponsorship."
The CPI noted that organizations such as the World Health Organization have shown the major effects alcohol marketing and advertising can have on young people in terms of when they begin drinking and how much they consume. "Teenagers' brains are still developing so drinking alcohol at this crucial stage interferes with that development and slows it down,” explained Flannery. "The teen years are crucial stages for developing skills and confidence in how to deal with social situations and various problems that life throws at us. If they are consuming alcohol in these years then their ability to deal with life's challenges in their twenties is impaired as they may only have coped in these circumstances by using alcohol."
Among several other countries regulating, or trying to regulate, alcohol in sports advertising are Australia, the United Kingdom and France. In Australia, where the alcohol industry has a voluntary ad regulation system, an Australian Alcohol Advertising Review Board (AARB) was formed in 2012 due to complaints of companies targeting young people through sport sponsorship. AARB chair professor Fiona Stanley says, "What reason can there be to expose young people and children to the association of alcohol with their sporting heroes or with behaviors such as driving fast cars and surfing?"
In the U.K., lawmakers are considering a total ban on sporting event alcohol advertising as part of sweeping reforms aimed at stemming the U.K.'s swell of alcohol use disorders and underage drinking. Currently there are complicated rules governing alcohol advertising saying that ads cannot be included around programs or films where more than 10 percent of the audience is under 18. (In the U.S. the voluntary standard is 28.4 percent, set by the Distilled Spirits Council of the U.S.)
France brought in a ban on alcohol sponsorship in sports in 2011. Rugby's Heineken cup is called the ‘H’ cup there.
Is such a ban possible in the U.S.? Alcohol Justice notes that in recent years, public health advocates and lawmakers have become reticent to enact new or enforce current restrictions on alcohol advertisements, citing court rulings backing free-speech rights. “However, with each ruling, courts have continued to clarify their position regarding the regulation of advertising. As a result, through careful drafting, state and local governments can still restrict alcohol advertising. Moreover, governments can look to crafting restrictions that effectively minimize youth exposure while addressing 21st-century advertising tactics. The scientific evidence is clear that the more ads kids see, the more likely they are to drink, and drink to excess.”
-- from examiner.com (see complete article)
www.alcohologist.com
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Showing posts with label gross ad. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gross ad. Show all posts
Saturday, November 9, 2013
Thursday, June 6, 2013
Vomit commercials, higher taxes and other ways to reduce teen drinking
You click on the TV and land right on an alcohol commercial. Not a Bud Light spot from the largest beverage advertiser in the U.S. Anheuser-Busch InBev. (Yes, they spend more than Coca-Cola or Pepsi on TV spots.) It is a teen in the alcohol ad, throwing up his girlfriend, not as in tossing her in the air but as in vomiting her up. (The link to the ad, the second on the page, is here... WARNING: NOT for the squeamish.)
Parents and peers influence teen decisions to drink. However, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health research clearly indicates that alcohol advertising and marketing also have a “significant effect by influencing youth and adult expectations and attitudes, and helping to create an environment that promotes underage drinking.”
That's the research backing up efforts to limit alcohol ads during televised sports (April 18 in this blog), as well as the graphic, but effective, approach for the Spanish television public service announcement. It's gross... lowbrow... and visually effective in a way that reaches teens on their love-to-be-shocked level with the message, “Every time you get drunk, you separate yourself from the things that matter.”
Spain's government-quoted figures claim that 65 percent of 14- to 18-year-olds in Spain drink regularly. (The minimum drinking age is 18, but 16-year-olds may buy beer and wine if accompanied by their parents.) The problem in the United States is nearly as pronounced, with one in four 12 to 20-year-olds having consumed alcohol just in the last 30 days. See the stats here.
Graphic approaches like Spain's haven't been tried in the U.S. yet. On May 13, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) launched a new TV/radio/print ad campaign called “Talk. They Listen.” Rather than directed toward teens, the SAMHSA effort is intended to empower parents to talk to children as young as nine years old about the dangers of underage drinking.
Other efforts to curb underage drinking include voluntary bans on flavored malt beverages, also known as “alcopops,” and raising taxes to price alcoholic beverages more out of the same range as soda or bottled water.
An article posted November 21 on the website of the National Council on Alcohol and Drug Dependence, Inc. (NCADD) notes higher alcohol taxes discourage teens from drinking. "These taxes prevent and reduce drinking and death among young people, as well as among heavy drinkers," says David H. Jernigan, PhD, Associate Professor and Director, Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY), also at Johns Hopkins, who has conducted research on the effect of the taxes.
In a report prepared as part of the campaign to advocate for increasing Maryland’s excise tax, CAMY estimated that a dime a drink increase in Maryland's alcohol excise taxes would reduce alcohol consumption by 4.8 percent. "The impact could be even larger among youth, since they are less likely to be addicted to alcohol than older drinkers, and also have less disposable income — both factors that make them more sensitive to increases in the cost of alcohol," the report states.
"When alcohol is cheaper at the corner store than milk, orange juice or sometimes even water, it sends young people the wrong message," Jernigan says. "It makes alcohol look like an ordinary commodity when it is not." He notes that prices on alcohol used to be much higher than those on other beverages. The most important factor in the price drop has been the inability of alcohol taxes to keep up with inflation. (See the complete article on U.S. Alcohol taxes.)
The Community Preventive Services Task Force recommends increasing the unit price of alcohol by raising taxes based on strong evidence of effectiveness for reducing excessive alcohol consumption and related harms.
The SATURDAY REWIND June 8 will look at a recent study on parenting and teen alcohol abuse.
www.alcohologist.com
Parents and peers influence teen decisions to drink. However, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health research clearly indicates that alcohol advertising and marketing also have a “significant effect by influencing youth and adult expectations and attitudes, and helping to create an environment that promotes underage drinking.”
That's the research backing up efforts to limit alcohol ads during televised sports (April 18 in this blog), as well as the graphic, but effective, approach for the Spanish television public service announcement. It's gross... lowbrow... and visually effective in a way that reaches teens on their love-to-be-shocked level with the message, “Every time you get drunk, you separate yourself from the things that matter.”
Spain's government-quoted figures claim that 65 percent of 14- to 18-year-olds in Spain drink regularly. (The minimum drinking age is 18, but 16-year-olds may buy beer and wine if accompanied by their parents.) The problem in the United States is nearly as pronounced, with one in four 12 to 20-year-olds having consumed alcohol just in the last 30 days. See the stats here.
Graphic approaches like Spain's haven't been tried in the U.S. yet. On May 13, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) launched a new TV/radio/print ad campaign called “Talk. They Listen.” Rather than directed toward teens, the SAMHSA effort is intended to empower parents to talk to children as young as nine years old about the dangers of underage drinking.
Other efforts to curb underage drinking include voluntary bans on flavored malt beverages, also known as “alcopops,” and raising taxes to price alcoholic beverages more out of the same range as soda or bottled water.
An article posted November 21 on the website of the National Council on Alcohol and Drug Dependence, Inc. (NCADD) notes higher alcohol taxes discourage teens from drinking. "These taxes prevent and reduce drinking and death among young people, as well as among heavy drinkers," says David H. Jernigan, PhD, Associate Professor and Director, Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY), also at Johns Hopkins, who has conducted research on the effect of the taxes.
In a report prepared as part of the campaign to advocate for increasing Maryland’s excise tax, CAMY estimated that a dime a drink increase in Maryland's alcohol excise taxes would reduce alcohol consumption by 4.8 percent. "The impact could be even larger among youth, since they are less likely to be addicted to alcohol than older drinkers, and also have less disposable income — both factors that make them more sensitive to increases in the cost of alcohol," the report states.
"When alcohol is cheaper at the corner store than milk, orange juice or sometimes even water, it sends young people the wrong message," Jernigan says. "It makes alcohol look like an ordinary commodity when it is not." He notes that prices on alcohol used to be much higher than those on other beverages. The most important factor in the price drop has been the inability of alcohol taxes to keep up with inflation. (See the complete article on U.S. Alcohol taxes.)
The Community Preventive Services Task Force recommends increasing the unit price of alcohol by raising taxes based on strong evidence of effectiveness for reducing excessive alcohol consumption and related harms.
The SATURDAY REWIND June 8 will look at a recent study on parenting and teen alcohol abuse.
www.alcohologist.com
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