Daily HealthBeat Tip

Drinking in the ads.

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

Do alcohol ads work? Researchers say they can measure how the amount of drinking goes up when people are exposed to the ads. Leslie Snyder of the University of Connecticut looked at survey data on almost 1,900 people ages 15 to 26.

"Youth who saw more ads drank more. And for each additional ad that they saw, their drinking increased by about one percent." (eight seconds)

She also found young people drank more when alcohol advertisers spent more in their media market. The study, which was supported by the National Institutes of Health, was in Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.

Snyder thinks young people and their parents need to realize advertisers want to get customers, that staying sober can be fun – and that alcohol can damage a young person’s brain, which is still developing into the early 20s.

Learn more at www.hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I'm Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: March 15, 2006

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