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A Cup of Health with CDC
January 12, 2007
Teens and Alcohol Ads on the Radio (Youth Exposure to Alcohol Advertising on Radio --- United States, June--August 2004) 2004

[Announcer] This podcast is presented by the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. CDC – safer, healthier people.

[Matthew Reynolds] Welcome to A Cup of Health with CDC, a weekly broadcast
of the MMWR, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. I’m your host, Matthew
Reynolds.

Ever wonder what your kids are listening to on the radio besides the latest from
Justin Timberlake or Evanescence? According to the CDC, they’re also barraged
by alcohol advertisements.

Joining us by phone to discuss the CDC’s most recent study on alcohol
advertising on the radio is Dr. Tim Naimi of the CDC’s Division of Adult and
Community Health.

Welcome to the show, Dr. Naimi.

[Dr. Tim Naimi] Oh, it’s great to be here Matthew. Thanks for having me on.
[Matthew Reynolds] A lot of people know underage drinking is a problem, but
why is it important that we talk about it?

[Dr. Tim Naimi] Well, I think it’s a great question to start off. Underage drinking
causes about 5,000 deaths a year in the United States, so it’s a big ticket in
terms of deaths.

But, more than that, it causes lots of other problems with kids, associated with a
lot of big problems – school failure, violence, sexually transmitted diseases,
unintended pregnancy. So it really links to a lot of the key health and public
health issues that we have among youth today.

[Matthew Reynolds] And how are these kids being influenced by these types of
radio ads?

[Dr. Tim Naimi] Well, obviously advertising in general is important for getting a
product accepted socially and then adopted. And there is good evidence to show
that exposure to lots of alcohol advertising increases the likelihood that a kid will
drink alcohol.

And what it really does is lays sort of a social groundwork, that advertising
typically portrays alcohol in a very glamorous light. The people who are doing it
on TV tend to look great. And a lot of times there’s an implication that there’s
going to be an impending hookup with a gorgeous member of the opposite sex,
and all sorts of exciting things.

So, again, advertising is important. When we have lots of exposure of alcohol
advertising to kids who are not yet of the drinking age, many of whom are not
really capable of making good decisions for themselves yet, that’s, I think, an
area of concern for all of us.

[Matthew Reynolds] So what exactly does this study tell us, then?

[Dr. Tim Naimi] Well, what this study looked at, Matthew, is it looked at alcohol
advertising on radio. And what it found is that basically half of all radio ads occur
on radio programs where the audience is comprised disproportionately of
underage youth.

And what do I mean by that? Well, about 15 percent of the population is
comprised of kids aged 12 to 20. And what we see consistently is that a lot of the
ads are placed on programs that have a heck of a lot of underage youths
listening to them.

And when you look at all the alcohol advertising that kids are exposed to on the
radio, these ads, placed in the programs that I just mentioned, account for about
70 percent of all the ads that kids hear. So it’s a big problem.

[Matthew Reynolds] Yeah, that’s a large number; certainly unexpected. So are
there any regulations or laws that prohibit this type of advertising?

[Dr. Tim Naimi] Well, you ask a great question. Right now, the way it works in the
United States is that alcohol advertising is essentially voluntarily regulated by the
alcohol industry, with oversight, in theory, by the Federal Trade Commission. And
I say, “in theory,” because oversight, frankly, is quite difficult, and technically
involves monitoring advertising, knowing the composition of these radio
audiences, and this requires a lot of money and time and that’s why I think the
data that we looked at is so unique and so important.

The way it stands now is that the alcohol companies have agreed not to
advertise on programs where underage youths exceed 30 percent, or a two times
disproportionate share of the audience. But even with this extremely permissive
threshold, what our study found is that fully one-third of all advertisements on
radio heard by underage youths are accounted for by ads that are placed in
programming that exceeds the industry’s own voluntary standards.

So this is very concerning and I think, as a start to addressing this problem, we
would look for the industry to start upholding their own code of conduct. And
were they to do that, alcohol advertising on radio to kids would decline by about a
third. That’s a heck of a big impact.

[Matthew Reynolds] So what advice can you give to parents about this problem?

[Dr. Tim Naimi] Well, I think parents are an important issue. I guess it would be
surprising, but I think the way I would start answering that question is that 30
percent of adults in this country drink in excess of national guidelines. In other
words, either on a weekly or a per occasion, as we call it, basis, they drink more
than is healthy, and so the first thing that kids learn from is their own parents. So
a lot of times I think it boils down not so much to `do what I say,’ as they do what
I do, or do what a parent does. And so I think we can start by looking at
ourselves in the mirror, from that standpoint.

There are other important issues for parents to think about, like the access that
their kids might have to alcohol in their own home. But I think what we really
need to think about, as an adult community, as a society, is really making sure
that the existing regulations on marketing are enforced, first of all, and ultimately
strengthened.

But until that happens, I guess it’s another good reason to not have your kids
watch too much TV.

[Matthew Reynolds] Well Dr. Naimi, thanks so much for talking with us here
today.

[Dr. Tim Naimi] You’re very welcome; I really enjoyed it. Best of luck.

[Matthew Reynolds] Thanks. Well, that’s it for this week’s show. Don’t forget to
join us next week. Until then, be well. This is Matthew Reynolds for A Cup of
Health with CDC.

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