Alcohol adverts may lead to underage drinking
Alcohol adverts may lead to underage drinking
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Friday, 06, Feb 2009 08:11
Alcohol advertising and marketing may lead to underage drinking, a new report claims.
The survey of more than 13,000 people, published in the journal BMC Public Health today, suggest that exposure to advertisements and product placements leads to increased alcohol consumption.
The authors claim that from reviewing seven selected studies on the topic they found exposure to TV alcohol advertisements was associated with an increased tendency to drink as was reading magazine ads.
It wasn't such adverts either; hours spent watching films, playing games and watching music videos were all find to be related with young people's tendency to consume alcohol also.
"All seven studies demonstrated significant effects across a range of different exposure variables and outcome measure," author Lesley Smith, from Oxford Brookes University, said.
"One showed that for each additional hour of TV viewing per day the average risk of starting to drink increased by nine per cent during the following 18 months.
"Another found that for each additional hour of exposure to alcohol use depicted in popular movies there was a 15 per cent increase in likelihood of having tried alcohol 13 to 26 months later."
As a result, the authors say counter-advertising, social marketing techniques and other prevention options such as parenting programmes, price increases and limiting availability may be useful to limit alcohol problems in young people.
A separate editorial published in the Lancet claims education and persuasions are not effective intervention on their own – and must be accompanied by government strategies which focus on price, availability, and affordability of alcohol.
"The UK is often cited as a country that (because of industry influence and the possible political unpopularity of having a drinking age limit) has had an absence of effective alcohol policies, preferring soft measures like education campaigns on issues such as underage drinking, rather than tackling the root of the problem," the publication states.
"It is no surprise then that the UK has some of the worst indicators of alcohol related harm in young people in Europe."