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Study: Underage drinking pervasive

Experts say advertising campaigns contribute to permissive attitudes

By Hilda Hoy
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
July 25th, 2007 issue

Research for a World Health Organization study on adolescent health shows that high drinking among Czech youth has continued unabated, leading some experts to call for drastic action.
The international Health Behavior in School-aged Children (HBSC) study, completed every four years, will be published at the end of this year, said Ladislav Csémy, lead researcher for the study’s Czech component.
Until then, his surveys of some 5,700 randomly chosen adolescents show that one in three 15-year-olds and one in eight 13-year-olds consume alcohol at least once a week.
Those numbers are consistent with past HBSC studies, he said. While adolescent smoking here has declined this century, “Czech kids are always in the top third of countries” when it comes to drinking, and they start the habit early, he said. Beer is their usual beverage of choice, and many kids say it’s easy to get.
Besides a social attitude that’s generally permissive of alcohol consumption, “massive” advertising is also a strong influence, he said.
“If you switch on the TV, you can always see large and nice advertisements for beer, spirits and mixed drinks. These ads usually show young people, successful and relaxing,” and the message is clear, Csémy said.
“Alcohol advertising is further reinforcing the social stereotype that a cup of beer or wine here and there does not harm that much,” said Tomáš Zábranský of Charles University’s Center for Addictology. “[But] when it comes to kids and teens, it does harm — and it harms a lot.”
There are few restrictions on alcohol commercials, said Václav Žák, chairman of the Council for Radio and TV Broadcasting.
Though the law has some guidelines — ads can’t make explicit promises of beauty or success to drinkers, for example — it doesn’t regulate the time of day they can be broadcast, he said. In other countries, alcohol ads can only be shown at certain times, or are banned completely.
The council “politely asks” advertisers and broadcasters to distance alcohol ads from children’s or teens’ programs. However, “Our law doesn’t allow us to penalize or prohibit broadcasters” if they ignore that request, Žák said.
Zábranský believes the only answer is a complete ban.
“You have to start somewhere. … A ban on alcohol advertising is a good and pretty much obvious and effective point to start with,” he said.

Hilda Hoy can be reached at hhoy@praguepost.com


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