ALCOHOL MARKETING AND YOUTH: EVIDENCE OF A PROBLEM

David H. Jernigan, Ph.D., Research Director,

Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth, Georgetown University

The consequences of youth alcohol use are real and tragic.  Alcohol plays a substantial role in the three leading causes of death among young people: unintentional injuries such as motor vehicle crashes, falls and drownings; as well as suicides and homicides.  Young people who begin drinking prior to the age of 15 are four times as likely to develop alcohol dependence as those who wait until they are 21 to drink.  In fact, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism recently reported that the onset of full-blown dependence on alcohol peaks at age 18, showing that this is a disease that commonly develops during adolescence.    

Yet the number of persons under age 18 who report having started drinking seems to be growing significantly, nearly doubling since 1990 from 2.2 to 4.1 million.  Monitoring the Future, the federal government’s annual survey of drug use among schoolchildren, recently found that 19.7 percent of eighth graders are current drinkers, and 14.5 reported having been drunk at least once in the past year.  Heavy drinking (alcohol consumed at the level of five or more drinks on a single occasion) accounts for nearly all of the alcohol consumed by teenagers.   

Public health research has found that exposure to alcohol marketing increases awareness of that marketing, which in turn influences young people’s beliefs about drinking, intention to drink, and drinking behavior.  In 1999, the Federal Trade Commission concluded that “while many factors may influence an underage person’s drinking decisions, including among other things parents, peers and media, there is reason to believe that advertising also plays a role.”    

Self-regulation in the alcohol industry is based on codes adopted by trade associations and the companies themselves.  The codes have detailed provisions regarding ad content, and there have been numerous complaints in recent years about alleged violations of these provisions.  However, while content of advertising is subjective, and attempts to limit it may raise 1^st Amendment objections, placement of advertising can be measured and quantified.  Our Center monitors the advertising placements of alcohol companies, working with a media planning firm with 25 years of research and media planning experience, and using industry-standard databases such as Nielsen and Arbitron, and industry-standard methodologies and measures such as gross rating points, which permit comparison of the media exposure received by different audiences of an advertising campaign.   

The Center has looked at exposure in each of the principal categories of measured media.  Our first report, released in September 2002, looked at alcohol advertising in magazines in 2001 and found that youth ages 12-20 saw more beer and distilled spirits ads per capita than adults 21 and over:  45 percent more beer ads and 27 percent more distilled spirit ads; more malternative ads – 60 percent more ads for the new sweet and fizzy beverages such as Smirnoff Ice; and fewer wine ads – 58 percent fewer than adults.   

On television, in 2002 there were 289,381 alcohol product commercials, and underage youth ages 12-20 were more likely per capita than legal-age adults to have seen 66,218 of them, or about 23%.  In other words, almost a quarter of all alcohol advertisements in 2002 “overexposed” youth (i.e. were on programs where youth were greater than 13.3% of the viewing audience, the percentage of youth 12-20 in the 2+ television viewing audience).  On television in 2002, kids saw more ads for beer and ale than they did for soda pop. 

On the radio, which more teens 12-17 listen to than any other age group, we analyzed 51,883 airings of radio ads for the 25 leading alcohol brands in 104 markets in the summer of 2003, and found that in 14 of the 15 largest markets, underage youth 12-20 heard more alcohol advertising per capita than adults 21 and above.  In 5 of the top 15 markets, youth also heard more advertising than young adults 21-34.  Twenty-eight percent of the airings occurred when youth were more than 30% of the listening audience – twice their percentage in the general population. 

We have been using our research findings to stimulate a national debate over what standard would be protective of our youth.  In response to a request from Congress, the Federal Trade Commission looked again at the issue of alcohol advertising and youth in 2003, and reported that the industry was 99% in compliance with its voluntary threshold of 50% as the maximum youth composition of audiences for alcohol advertising.  This was a standard that set approximately 1% of television programming off limits to alcohol advertisements.  The FTC also reported that all three industry trade associations had as of September 2003 adopted a 30% threshold for maximum youth audience size, and termed this “a significant improvement.”   

The National Research Council/Institute of Medicine also looked at this issue, in the context of a major study it released in September 2003 on how to reduce underage drinking.  Among the study’s recommendations: 

•       There should be ongoing, independent monitoring of youth exposure to alcohol advertising by the federal government.

•       The industry should adopt a 25% threshold immediately to show good faith, and should eventually move toward a 15%        threshold.

 The American Medical Association has called for a threshold of 15% youth composition for alcohol ad placement, plus no ads before 10 p.m., while Mothers Against Drunk Driving has called for restricting the placement of alcohol ads on TV to programs where the underage audience is 10% or less.  

We and many other parents, educators and public health professionals believe that it is time for alcohol companies to recognize their responsibility, and agree to more effective limits on youth exposure to their advertising.  Today’s young people grow up in an environment where alcohol advertising pervades the magazines they read, the music they listen to, the movies they watch, even where they go on vacation.  We think we can do a better job of protecting our children from this marketing, we think the industry should do a better job, and we believe our children deserve better.   

Thank you very much.