Commentary on Morgenstern et al. (2017): Party-themed advertisements and initiation of alcohol consumption.

Abstract

Exposure to party-themed alcohol advertisements seems to be associated with young people's initiation of drinking and binge drinking. The party theme predominates in some distilled spirits advertisements but not in the beer advertisements considered in the paper. Restrictions or total bans on party-themed advertisements are worth considering. Morgenstern et al.'s paper 1 involves yet another study that demonstrates the association among young people between exposure to alcohol advertisements and alcohol consumption 2, 3. However, it differs from most previous research by looking in particular at exposure to specific advertising content and subsequent initiation of drinking and of binge drinking among young people (defined as under-aged adolescents, under-aged young adults and young adults) in the United States. The study addresses an important need for research to examine different forms of alcohol advertising content to understand more clearly the association (and mechanisms of effect) between exposure and consumption. The paper's main finding, that party-themed advertisements are associated strongly with initiation of drinking and binge drinking among young people, is hardly surprising, as party-themed advertisements would be expected to be aimed at this population. What is interesting is the extent to which the party-themed advertisements are associated with some spirits advertisements. Of note, from the table in the Appendix, is the finding that only distilled spirits adverts (involving rum, vodka and bourbon) were wholly (100%) party-themed (i.e. Captain Morgan, Jim Beam, Malibu Rum, Stolichnaya), whereas the beer and alcopops adverts were only partially party-themed. This finding coincides with the increasing preference of young people in the United States for spirits relative to other beverage types during recent years 4. According to the 2011 European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD) report, spirits are the second most popular beverage type, after beer, among young people in Europe 5. This is in line with findings pointing to the ever-increasing advertising of distilled spirits in the United States 6, 7, and the view that distilled spirits companies have played a role in increasing consumption of spirits by young people 7, 8. Given the association between spirits consumption and binge drinking 9 and the adverse effects of consumption of spirits relative to other beverage types 8 among young people, this finding is a major public health concern. The authors suggest that their findings imply that there could be benefits to the application of thematic restrictions to alcohol marketing. We concur with this proposed intervention. If replications of this study can confirm that party-themed advertisements are related highly to initiation of drinking or of binge drinking (as demonstrated by the statistically significant odds ratios for alcohol use onset and binge drinking onset in this study), then the imposition of restrictions or total bans on party-themed advertisements may well be effective in reducing underage drinking and youth binge drinking. With the current state of play in most countries, whereby alcohol beverage companies are responsible for monitoring their own marketing practices, and given that they are often non-compliant with their own self-regulatory codes 10, 11, public health advocates should consider lobbying for bans on party-themed advertisements, including those portraying ‘partying’, ‘love’, ‘sex’ and similar-themed scenarios that would be subsumed under the partying theme 12. However, more research would be useful, including neuroscience studies and experimental investigations (bearing in mind their ethical challenges), to identify whether (and how) causation may be at play. Finally, the findings leave open the question of whether the observed effects might differ among different sectors of young or underage drinkers, such as males versus females. Similarly, they do not provide an indication of whether party-themed advertisements would have a bearing on drinking outcomes among older adults, existing drinkers or heavy drinkers by influencing their drinking prospectively or in serving as post-consumption marketing, in which case such advertisements would alter individuals' memories of previous consumption experiences 13. Further research on these questions would be useful for informing policies, given the influential role of alcohol marketing on alcohol consumption globally 14. None.