A new study conducted by the Australian University of Wollongong comes to the same conclusion as similar studies conducted in other countries: exposure to alcohol advertisements among adolescents is strongly associated with drinking patterns. In the article the authors point to the current high levels of alcohol consumption among Australian youth and underline the need to take action against the high levels of young people’s exposure to alcohol advertising.
The research on the exposure to different types of alcohol advertising of 12–17 year old Australians and the association between exposure to advertising and alcohol consumption was conducted by professor Sandra Jones and doctor Christopher Magee. For this purpose they questioned 1113 adolescents across metropolitan, regional and rural New South Wales. Firstly, the respondents were asked about their exposure to alcohol marketing across eight media, including television, Internet and point-of-sale. Subsequently, they were asked when they first started drinking alcohol, what they had consumed recently and their frequency of consumption during the last year.
The majority of the respondents said that they had been exposed to alcohol advertisements on television, in newspapers and magazines, on the Internet, on billboards/posters and promotional materials and in bottle shops, bars and pubs. Exposure to numerous of these types of alcohol advertisements was associated with increased alcohol consumption, with differences by age and gender.