Advertising and Alcohol Abuse
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The primary purpose of advertising is to entice the consumer to buy the product being advertised, but there are often associated issues involved in the advertising message. For some products, it is not only important to sell the specific brand but also necessary to entice the consumer to use this type of product at all. Cigarette and alcohol advertising not only promotes specific brands but the idea of smoking or drinking. Cigarette advertising has been much criticized and much curtailed because of its power to cause young people in particular to take up smoking. Liquor advertising also sells an image of drinking that is intended to appeal to the young and to influence young people to start drinking; the ads then try to influence what brand consumers buy. The degree of drinking in America today shows that such advertising is effective.James K. Glassman decries the recent legal decisions concerning the liability of cigarette companies, but he also notes that there is no reason to ignore producers of alcohol if such settlements are to be allowed: To be consistent with their crusade against cigarettes, the health police have to go after alcohol. The most recent calculations by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention place the number of alcohol related deaths in the United States each year at 108,000. That's fewer than the 419,000 deaths attributed to smoking, but there's a big difference: While cigarettes kill in middle age or later, alcohol kills people in thei
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r. These types of ads existed in part because government regulation of alcohol advertising is fragmented and involves three agencies--the Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms--none of which have clear-cut authority to regulate advertising aimed specifically at young people. Television networks also give these ads the widest possible air play because they have come to rely on beer and wine marketers to supply some $700 million of revenue yearly. For their part, advertisers deny that they are making an appeal to young people with these ads, though the message seems to be getting through whether it is intended or not ("A Drug Problem Often Overlooked," 6).
Efforts to control advertising face numerous difficulties. The example of cigarette advertising shows some of these problems. In May 1996, for example, the Supreme Court struck down a Rhode Island law that banned advertising liquor prices, and the Court wrote four separate opinions, indicating both the strength of commercial speech protection and the divisions about how protection should be applied. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote, "The First Amendment directs us to be especially skeptical of regulations
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Control Prevention, Paul Stevens, Joe Camel, Fletcher Fischer, , Malt Liquor, Tobacco Firearms--none, Kelly Edwards, James Glassman, Harper's December, alcohol advertising, alcohol consumption, alcohol abuse, advertising alcohol, print ads, alcohol products, sept 1996, block copy, counter advertising, consumption alcohol,
Approximate Word count = 1927
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)
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