Alcohol advertising

[Irwin]

It is alcohol awareness week - a TV advert was made by Balance (North East alcohol office) which the advertising standards authority banned as it infringed the advertising rules. It highlights how much alcohol advertising our children see and the affect that can have the video is on Youtube

• see what you think but it asks people to sign up to a petition to get the subject debated in Parliament (100,000 signatures required) -- its about time we said enough is enough and stop kids being bombarded with this type of advertising.

In France you can get booze out of vending machines, everyone drinks with a meal and there is plenty of advertising, yet the youth are not sitting in the parks drinking white lighting.

The more you demonis something and single it out, the more appealing it is to people.

France has double the rate of liver disease than the UK and is struggling with an increasingly large number of alcoholics - medical staff in France are astounded that the UK would want to follow their example in the attitude to alcohol.
It isn't about demonising alcohol it's pointing out to young people the risks and consequences associated with it - giving them an informed choice

How is it that one day the news says there are a million 16 - 24 year-olds out of work, not in education or training, and the next this same section of the population apparently has so much money to spend on booze that they're dying of cirrhosis and need to be warned off it by changes to advertising rules? Personally speaking, as a kid/student/trainee worker, I never had the money to take up a serious drinking or smoking habit even if I'd wanted to. Knew few that did.

There maybe a million 16-24yr old's unemployed in the UK but when you can buy alcohol at as little as 12p per unit (that's 24p for a can of lager) they don't need that much money to buy it - at those prices it would only cost an adult male £3.36 to get there WEEKLY recommended intake and a female £2.52.

Well until they legalise the opium dens again or improve life so people don't feel so depressed and pissed off they need a drink, nothing will change no matter what, no one cares about warnings, no one needs advertising they know it's there anyway, and if it wasn't there would just be plenty of bathtub breweries.

So it seems the 'answer' is not to change advertising, which is perfectly benign to people who know how to use alcohol responsibly, but to raise the price of a unit of alcohol as they are doing in Scotland and improve education into the negative effects of overconsumption.

Give people hope for the future, give them a less stressful life, give them something else to do.

Do you think anyone cares what name is on the label? people drink the cheapest shit they can find because it's all about getting shit faced, advertising means nothing, the adverts are for those sitting at home buying a bottle of wine a week, not those in the park drinking cider, not those downing a bottle of Iceland Vodkat a day.

And what good is it increasing the price? that just takes food away from mouths, more stress and more drinking.