Alcohol advertising & teen drinking

From a recent article published in Medscape Medical News:

Alcohol marketing is effective. Although profitable for the manufacturers, the detrimental results seen in American adolescents — who are not the target audience — are increased frequencies of drinking and binge drinking, which could be a prelude to alcohol-related behavioral and health problems in later life.

Meanwhile, according to an article in the Economist, "People in rich countries are not drinking enough beer. By volume, sales in 2010 fell by 1.5% in America and 2.3% in western Europe . . "  This means that the "big four" brewers will be increasing their marketing campaigns in an effort to revive beer sales.  "Their dream is to sell beer like premium-priced detergent," according to the article.

This news comes on the heals of a study about youth exposure to alcohol ads:
 
Youth exposure to alcohol advertising on U.S. television increased 71 percent between 2001 and 2009, more than the exposure of either adults ages 21 and above or young adults ages 21 to 34, according to an analysis from the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Alcohol industry's self regulation of marketing to youth to be studied

The Federal Trade Commission plans to begin a study of the self-regulatory efforts of the alcoholic beverage industry. This will serve as the basis for the FTC’s fourth major report on the effectiveness of voluntary industry guidelines for reducing advertising and marketing to underage audiences by beer, wine, and distilled spirits manufacturers.


In response, the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY) released a statement that included:

The FTC last looked at this issue in 2008. Since then, CAMY has released several reports showing the inadequacy of the industry’s current threshold for placing advertising that reaches underage audiences. Our most recent TV report found that youth exposure to alcohol advertising in that medium actually increased faster than either young adult (ages 21 to 34) or adult exposure since the adoption of the industry’s current standard. While monitoring industry’s compliance with their advertising codes is welcome, the current standards do not protect young people from overexposure to alcohol advertising.