The faces and consequences of underage drinking
Aside from the fact that underage alcohol consumption is illegal, the consequences can be serious. Alcohol abuse is a major drug problem among the nation's youth, where the average age of a first drink by youth, those ages 12 to 17, is just under 13 years old. Alcohol can cause serious problems; underage alcohol consumption is fast growing round the globe as some youth drink it for fun, some for socialising and some just to show off, in every case it is harmful for underage children.

Between 1995 and 2000, the number of youths who started drinking alcohol rose from 2.2 million to 3.1 million. At the same time, the average age when kids start drinking has been dropping for nearly 40 years.

In addition to alcohol abuse, alcohol plays a significant role in the three leading causes of death among young people: unintentional injuries including motor vehicle deaths and drownings, suicides, and homicides.

"The message from these ads is that drinking isn't that bad," said Ortega. "Well, it is. Underage drinking is not just a minor problem. "A lot of kids in my school put out like it's a normal thing to drink and everybody does it," added Ortega, an activist with Texans Standing Tall, a statewide coalition that works to prevent underage drinking. "But I don't think there is such a thing as responsible drinking when you're underage. That's why we have laws." Not all kids think like Ortega, though.

Reaching teens
Recent research by the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY) at Georgetown University has shown that adolescents’ already at a vulnerable age when they are learning to make appropriate decisions about all kinds of risky behaviours are "overexposed" to alcohol advertising. CAMY considers youth overexposed to TV advertising when TV alcohol ads are placed on programs where the youth audience exceeds 15 percent, which is the percentage of young people overall in the national TV viewing population. In September 2003, the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine recommended an eventual standard of removing alcohol advertising from TV programs where 15 percent or more of the total audience is underage. Under pressure, industry trade groups, the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, and the Beer Institute tightened their voluntary codes, promising to limit advertising to venues where the youth audience is no more than 30 percent of the total audience.

CAMY commissioned Virtual Media Resources, a media research, planning, market analysis and consulting firm, to analyze alcohol advertising data in magazines and on television. The findings were especially disturbing. In 2001, alcohol advertising in magazines often reached underage youth more effectively than adults, meaning that, on average, youth 12 to 20 saw more alcohol advertising per capita than did legal-age adults. Ten magazines, each with at least one-fourth of their total readership below the legal drinking age, featured nearly one-third of all alcohol advertising expenditures in magazines.

More than half of the money spent on alcohol magazine advertising could be found in 24 magazines with youth audiences, ages 12 to 20, that exceeded 15.8 percent. In fact, 25 brands placed all of their magazine ads in such publications.

Nearly a quarter of the spots advertising alcohol on television were seen by audiences made up of disproportionately large numbers of those between the ages of 12 and 20. Many of these ads appeared on the perennial favorites of teenagers: sports programs and situation comedies.

CAMY reviewed 208,909 alcohol ads, placed at a total cost of $811.2 million. Ads that overexposed youth accounted for $119 million of this spending. The ads were shown on shows ranging from sports programs like SportsCenter and the NBA and Stanley Cup playoffs, to drama programs like Dark Angel and X-Files, variety programs like MADtv and Saturday Night Live, situation comedies like That '70s Show and Titus, and talk shows like Late Night with Conan O'Brien and The Daily Show. Moreover, UPN, Comedy Central, BET, and VH1?routinely overexposed youth to alcohol advertising in 2001.

Not my kid
"Parents should be alarmed to hear that their kids are seeing more TV ads for beer than for sneakers, jeans, gum, juice, or other popular youth products," says Wendy J. Hamilton, national president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). ''Something is terribly wrong? ."
Parents should be concerned about their teens' overexposure to alcohol advertising and there are recent indications that they are.
A survey conducted earlier this year for CAMY by Peter D. Hart Research Associates and American Viewpoint showed that two-thirds of parents believe that seeing and hearing these ads make children more likely to drink. Nearly three-quarters feel the industry isn't doing enough to limit the amount of alcohol advertising that teens see.

Also, a wide gap exists between parents' perception of their teens' drinking behaviors and those habits as reported by teenagers themselves. Only 31 percent of parents of 15- to 16-year-olds believe that their teen has had a drink in the past year, compared with 60 percent of teenagers in this age group who report having done so.

Interestingly, large majorities among the demographic subgroups who were interviewed agreed, including two-thirds or more of Republicans, Independents, and Democrats, groups that often are at odds when it comes to other issues.

The alcohol industry's comeback
Currently, the alcohol industry essentially regulates itself, with voluntary guidelines to curb youth advertising. Many believe, however, that the self-imposed rules are weak. For example, until recently, the beer and distilled spirits industries called for no advertising on programs with a 50 percent or greater youth audience, but in practice that standard only ruled out 1 percent of the programs tracked by Nielsen 187 of 14,359 programs in 2001. "The industry's own guidelines are so permissive that, in practice, they amount to no limits at all," said David Kessler, M.D., former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, and now dean of the school of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco. "It is like a promise not to drive faster than 125 miles per hour that doesn't slow you down much. These industry codes do little to protect youth from ads that promote alcohol consumption," said Kessler, an advisor to CAMY. In response to criticism, the beer and distilled spirits industries changed their codes in September 2003 to restrict ads where the youth audience is 30 percent or more. Because this still permits advertising where the youth are disproportionately represented in the audience, the Institute of Medicine recommended that the industry move toward a 15 percent threshold monitored on an ongoing basis by the Public Health Service.

Finally, so-called ''responsibility" ads, those placed by the industry to encourage drinking responsibly and not drinking and driving, or to discourage underage drinking, have been questioned. CAMY analyzed the industry's responsibility advertising on television in 2001. Alcohol companies placed more than 87 product promotion commercials for every ad about not driving after drinking, or not drinking before age 21. Spending on responsibility ads totaled less than 3 percent of the industry's TV advertising budget, according to CAMY analysis. In 2001, the alcohol industry spent a total of $811.2 million on televised advertising for its products, compared with $23.2 million on responsibility ads.

"I think parents would be really surprised if they took a look at their kids' magazines and saw how many beer and alcohol ads there are," Darlene Ortega said. "I know the companies have ways to control their advertising, and who they advertise to. But they don't. You have to ask: why are youths seeing more of these ads than adults? And what can we do to stop it?"