Kids Who Own Alcohol Promotional Items More Likely to Begin Drinking

Newswise — Adolescents who own alcohol promotional items, such as t-shirts, caps, backpacks and other paraphernalia, are more than 1.5 times more likely to try drinking than their peers, according to a study by Dartmouth Medical School researchers.

The study, released at the annual meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies in Washington, D.C., recommends that the alcohol industry follow the example of the tobacco industry and abandon the practice of distributing such promotional items.

Lead study author Auden C. McClure, M.D. is a pediatric physician at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, as well as a faculty member at the medical school. She and fellow researchers studied 2,406 middle school students from Vermont and New Hampshire, beginning in 1999. Participants ranged from 5th through 8th graders and included only those who had never used alcohol. At follow-up, 1-2 years later, they were asked whether they owned an alcohol promotional item (API) and if they had initiated alcohol use. Fourteen percent of students reported they did own at least one API and 15 percent reported using alcohol. Adjusting for other factors, such as peer drinking, the researchers found a strong link between ownership of an API and alcohol use.

“Although more studies need to be done to see if this association holds in a more representative population, it is clear that APIs are prevalent among young adolescents and that ownership is associated with early initiation of alcohol use,” McClure said. “In addition, when adolescents wear these items they become walking advertisements for the alcohol industry, advertising to their peers. These concerns should prompt the alcohol industry to emulate the tobacco industry, which voluntarily ended the distribution of branded promotional items in 1998.”

More than a billion dollars a year is spent on alcohol advertising, including television, magazine, and billboard advertisements, and promotional items such as t-shirts, sweatshirts, hats, and other items that display an alcohol brand, the authors note. Tobacco companies used similar tactics in the 1980’s and 1990’s, spending $1.2 billion annually on promotional items. When ownership of these items by young adolescents was proved to have a relationship to greater rates of smoking by youths, a ban on such items was agreed to by the cigarette companies as part of the Master Settlement Agreement with State Attorneys General.

Until the alcohol industry follows suit and stops distribution of APIs, McClure noted that parents and educators can play a role in influencing children’s ownership of APIs. “From the perspective of the pediatric clinician, we hope this new evidence will prompt discussions to discourage parents from allowing APIs in their homes and to encourage schools to restrict APIs from being worn there.”

Co-authors on the paper, “Ownership of Alcohol Promotional Items and Its Association with Early Onset Teen Drinking,” were Jennifer Gibson, M.S. and James D. Sargent, MD, also of the Department of Pediatrics at Dartmouth Medical School.