Curb booze marketing to youngsters: AMA

18 Feb 2013, 3:47 pm   -   Source: AAP

Doctors are again criticising the alcohol industry's marketing of its products to Australia's young drinkers.

Doctors are calling for an end to what they say is the alcohol industry's grooming of young consumers.

The Australian Medical Association (AMA) has renewed its calls for a federal inquiry into alcohol marketing to teenagers and those in their 20s, saying self regulation had failed to curb young people's boozy behaviour.

National president Steve Hambleton says the AMA is concerned not only with traditional media such as TV, radio and newspapers, but with digital media such as Facebook and the use of methods such as product placement.

"It's actually discussion of alcohol during commentary on sport; it's the fact that there is a bottle of champagne shaken up at the end of sport ... it's in video-clips, it's in Facebook pages," Dr Hambleton told AAP in Canberra on Monday.

"This grooming of young people that occurs through all sorts of means, means that the next generation of drinkers are locked in.

"What we know (is) that exposure for young people means they're more likely to start drinking earlier and start drinking more heavily, and we also know that those people who do drink earlier and more heavily end up being heavy drinkers, lifelong."

Speaking after an address by British public health expert Ian Gilmore, a long-time advocate for policy reform in the UK, Dr Hambleton pointed to the success of the anti-tobacco campaigns of the past.

He predicted an end to alcohol sponsorship of sport in the "foreseeable future".

"So you're not wearing it on your sleeve; you're not wearing it on shorts; you're not seeing it on the telly; you're not seeing it painted on the grass. There's no bubbly at the end of the race," he said.

"We think that progressively after that you'll see increasing regulation."

Sir Ian, chair of the UK Alcohol Health Alliance, said he did not think Australia faced as big an alcohol problem as the UK, "but you may be as bad in terms of the bingeing, the episodic drinking by young people", he added.

To illustrate how marketing impacted on young people, Sir Ian pointed to Welsh research which found students grossly overestimated the amount their peers drink.

"It's a bit like everyone thinking they (their peers) are getting more sex than they are," the former president of the Royal College of Physicians told AAP.

"People think they're having to keep up with all these other people who are drinking so much. They're all chasing what they see the norm as."

  • Follow us: 
  • Follow us on Facebook
  • Follow us on Twitter
  • Follow us on Youtube