Alcohol Advertising Should Be Banned
What is advertising, and what does it do? The answer can be found in one definition that advertising is ??the action of attracting public attention to a product????. So advertising is an announcement, in any form, that speaks for a product and promotes it to the public. It serves as a communication that tries to convey some idea of or convince people of the advantage of a product. However, if a product is harmful to people, like alcohol and tobacco, can or should it still be advertised to draw public attentions and attract people to purchase? Alcohol increases the risk of developing serious health problems because it does harm to many organs of the body, such as liver, stomach, and heart, etc.; and it is often the major cause of the deaths of high blood pressure, heart attack and stroke. Scientists have discovered that a lot of diseases, such as neuritis, hepatitis, are caused by alcohol. Statistics show that over 2 million Americans suffer from alcohol-related liver diseases. Alcohol can cause alcoholic hepatitis, alcoholic cirrhosis and increase the chance to develop inflammation and scarring of the liver. Alcohol also harms the pancreas that plays an important role in digesting the food we eat. It can lead to pancreatitis, or inflammation of the pancreas. Moreover, long-term drinking can bring about some forms of cancer, especially cancer of the throat, voice box, esophagus, colon and rectum. Some research shows that women are at slightly increased risk of developing breast cancer if they drink two or more drinks per day?. In addition, alcohol brings negative influence to people’s work and everyday life. A large number of alcoholics give a history of frequent prison sentences. In a survey of 151 men appearing at Metropolitan police courts on charges of drunkenness, carried out by the Alcohol Impact Project, Camberwell, a half were believed to be chemically dependent on alcohol; 30 per cent stated that they had been arrested three or more times in the preceding year. In the industrial region of Britain, the problem of drinking and alcoholism are among the reasons for absenteeism, friction, accidents, and lower productivity. All levels of industry are affected??. Every year, road accidents caused by drunken driving cost many lives. Alcohol affects people’s judgment and reaction, even though they have had only a little. A very small amount as 0.02 per cent of BAC (Blood Alcohol Concentration), i.e. consuming one 12-ounce beer, can weaken your driving skills----such as steering a car and reacting to things suddenly happen on the road.� � Still another fact is that after drinking alcohol people will more easily lose consciousness, which often results in the inharmonic with friends and colleagues, or even committing a crime. Alcohol can cure your injuries in the mind, release your pressure, or remove your annoyance? If so, people really need it. But it is not. Alcohol just helps lose your consciousness or for the moment forget the annoyance, or, better to say, delay your sufferings until the next time you drink. Then the reason why still so many people drink alcohol lies in not only that they drink in the preconception that drinking can release pressures, but also that the alcohol advertising contributes a lot. � �Advertising may try
to get you to buy a product not because of its advantages or your existing needs, but because of a need or desire that the advertisement itself tries to create.� ( DeFleur, 273) � People do not actually need alcohol; they buy alcohol products because of the advertised desire or need. � Life is harsh, your tequila shouldn't be.� � This is an � � � advertisement for tequila, a kind of alcohol. It seems to encourage people to escape from the reality of "harsh life" and indulge in the alcohol world. Many wine advertisements try to render an image of the palace-like upper class life, in which often there are several gentlemen sitting on the sofa in a luxuriously decorated room, with the beautiful ladies and Jazz, free-chatting and enjoying a cup of wine. How romantic and fantastic! It shapes an idea into the audience� minds: to enjoy the elegance of life, to have a cup of wine. �s On the other hand, instead of giving the sense of elegance, beer advertisements usually present to you the feeling like � �fresh, cool, high, magic� while drinking beers, so � that when you drink beers you will feel what they claim, though it may not be true. And most beer manufacturers choose to sponsor sports games. Apart from using the prosperous sports market as a great medium for people to get to know their products, they hope to implant into people� s mind that beers will better the enjoyment to sports in the � way that the excitement beers bring will contribute much to the excitement from watching the full-of-motion sports games. Even worse, alcohol advertisements have stretched their hands to women, adolescents and children. According to a survey of drunkenness offences in England and Wales, the number of female offences had doubled from 1977 to 1990, compared with a 1.3 increase for male.� In one of the advertisements for CLUB, a brand of wine, women are � encouraged to gain gender equality by drinking as what men do. The World Health Organization (WHO) has been calling for measures to be taken to protect our children and young people from alcohol. They point out that alcohol manufacturers attempt to influence the teenagers in the early age before they are legally allowed to drink alcoholic beverage. In 1997, the Center for Media Education (CME) investigated alcohol and tobacco advertisements on the web to see how they use online technologies for promotion. The report stated that underage drinking and smoking had already been a major health problem in the United States, and listed quite a few ways in which tobacco and alcohol manufacturers promote their products on the web, including interactive games, downloadable wallpapers and screensavers, and online interviews of some rock stars or pop singers. All were appealing to the young people.� Another research � undertaken by the Alcohol & Public Health Research Unit in 1994 on young people� �s responses to alcohol advertising showed that, most respondents believed that having a good time was connected with drinking beers. Some 12 to 13 year-old respondents even wished that they had been legally allowed to drink alcohol, so as to taste the fun that the characters in the ads presented.� These young people were already the potential � consumers of alcohol beverages. On the other hand, there is another way targeting children. The world� largest brewer Anheuser-Busch Company employs child �s appealing cartoon characters like frogs, dogs and dolphins to promote Budweiser beer. KidCom once held a study of the impact of cartoon character ads on American children and found that Budweiser cartoon characters were their favorite.� Though in many � countries alcohol advertisements are not allowed to be aired until 9 or 10 o�� clock in the evening, still many children have the chance to see those ads. There will be a
prompting message in most alcohol-oriented websites that reads, for example, in Carlsberg� s homepage, � In general it is not allowed to target advertising for � � alcoholic products towards children. Here we are to verify your age: Are you over 18?� However, there are no further verifications except two buttons (� � �YES� and � � NO� ) appearing for you to choose. In this case, children and adolescents can still � � browse these websites easily. They will be growing up with alcohol products; and alcohol would probably become their preference to cola and soda. Like any other advertisements, alcohol advertising, in all forms, is conducted basing on the principle of advertising: to promote a product to the public and try to persuade people to buy it. Nevertheless, alcohol advertising promotes a product that does harm to people� health. Making full use of the creative power in advertising, alcohol ads �s cover all members of the society including women, young people and children with its influence. In this way, there will be more people in the society suffering from alcoholrelated diseases and problems. Since the ban on tobacco advertisements had already been implemented a few years ago, in warning of the harm of tobacco, is it time now to think about bans on alcohol advertising?