Alcohol Advertising Increases Youth Drinking

Ads Aimed at Youth Increases Drinking Amounts

Young adults who view more alcohol advertisements than average also reported drinking more alcohol than average in a study of 1,872 young people conducted by the University of Connecticut.

Simply put, young people who view more alcohol advertisements tend to drink more alcohol.

For this research, Leslie B. Snyder, Ph.D., of the University of Connecticut, Storrs, and colleagues interviewed a random sample of young people aged 15 to 26 years in 24 U.S. media markets four times between 1999 and 2001.

According to a news release, the researchers interviewed 1,872 young people in the first wave, 1,173 of the same respondents in the second, 787 in the third and 588 in the fourth.

Synder also purchased information from the alcohol industry which showed the amount of advertising dollars spent in each state and total alcohol sold in each state, so they could analyze youth drinking in relation to dollars spent.

Increased Youth Drinking

The researchers reported these results:

• Each additional advertisement viewed per month increased the number of drinks consumed by 1 percent.

• The same percentage increase, 1 percent per advertisement per month, applied to underage drinkers (those younger than age 21) as well a legal aged drinkers.

• Young people drank three percent more per month for each additional dollar spent per capita in their market.

• Youth in markets with high advertising expenditures ($10 or more per person per month) also increased their drinking more over time, reaching a peak of 50 drinks per month by age 25.

"It is important to control for total alcohol consumption levels because markets with greater sales may attract more alcohol advertising from brands competing to sell in markets with more heavy drinkers," Synder wrote. Even with those controls in place, the researched showed an increase in youth drinking linked directly to advertising dollars spent.

Advertising a Contributing Factor

"Given that there was an impact on drinking using an objective measure of advertising expenditures, the results are inconsistent with the hypothesis that a correlation between advertising exposure and drinking could be caused entirely by selective attention on the part of drinkers," the authors report.

"The results also contradict claims that advertising is unrelated to youth drinking amounts: that advertising at best causes brand switching, only affects those older than the legal drinking age or is effectively countered by current educational efforts. Alcohol advertising was a contributing factor to youth drinking quantities over time."

Source: This study was published in the January 2006 issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA Archives journals.