Industry Self-regulation of alcohol marketing: A systematic review of content and exposure research

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: With governments increasingly relying on the alcohol industry's self-regulated marketing codes to restrict alcohol marketing activity, there is a need to summarize the findings of research relevant to alcohol marketing controls. This paper provides a systematic review of studies investigating the content of, and exposure to, alcohol marketing in relation to self-regulated guidelines. METHODS: Peer-reviewed articles were identified through four literature search engines: SCOPUS, Web of Science, PubMed, and PsychINFO. Non-peer reviewed reports produced by public health agencies, alcohol research centers, non-governmental organizations, and government research centers were also identified. 96 publications met the inclusion criteria. RESULTS: Of the 19 studies evaluating a specific marketing code and 25 content analysis studies reviewed, all detected content that could be considered potentially harmful to children and adolescents, including themes that strongly appeal to young men. Of the 57 studies of alcohol advertising exposure, high levels of youth exposure and high awareness of alcohol advertising were found for television, radio, print, digital, and outdoor ads. Youth exposure to alcohol advertising has increased over time, even as greater compliance with exposure thresholds has been documented. CONCLUSIONS: Violations of the content guidelines within self-regulated alcohol marketing codes are highly prevalent in certain media. Exposure to alcohol marketing, particularly among youth, is also prevalent. Taken together, the findings suggest that the current self-regulatory systems that govern alcohol marketing practices are not meeting their intended goal of protecting vulnerable populations

Alcohol industry self-regulation: Who is it really protecting

Self-regulation has been promoted by the alcohol industry as a sufficient means of regulating alcohol marketing activities. However, evidence suggests that the guidelines of self-regulated alcohol marketing codes are violated routinely, resulting in excessive alcohol marketing exposure to youth and the use of content that is potentially harmful to youth and other vulnerable populations. If the alcohol industry does not adhere to its own regulations the purpose and design of these codes should be questioned. Indeed, implementation of alcohol marketing self-regulation in Brazil, the United Kingdom and the United States was likely to delay statutory regulation rather than to promote public health. Moreover, current self-regulation codes suffer from vague language that may allow the industry to circumvent the guidelines, loopholes that may obstruct the implementation of the codes, lax exposure guidelines that can allow excessive youth exposure, even if properly followed, and a standard of review that may be inappropriate for protecting vulnerable populations. Greater public health benefits may be realized if legislative restrictions were applied to alcohol marketing, and strict statutory alcohol marketing regulations have been implemented and defended successfully in the European Union, with European courts declaring that restrictions on alcohol marketing are proportional to the benefits to public health. In contrast, attempts to restrict alcohol marketing activities in the United States have occurred through private litigation and have been unsuccessful. None the less, repeated violations of industry codes may provide legislators with sufficient justification to pass new legislation and for such legislation to withstand constitutional review in the United States and elsewhere.Alcohol Research UKInstitute of Alcohol StudiesUniv Connecticut, Sch Med, Dept Community Med & Hlth Care, Farmington, CT USAUniversidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP), Dept Psychiat, Sao Paulo, BrazilDepartment of Psychiatry, Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP), São Paulo, BrazilWeb of Scienc

Alcohol marketing in the Americas and Spain during the 2014 FIFA World Cup Tournament

Background and aims To identify the nature of visual alcohol references in alcohol advertisements during televised broadcasts of the 2014 FIFA World Cup Tournament matches and to evaluate cross-national differences according to alcohol marketing policy restrictiveness. Design Content analysis using the Delphi method and identification of in-game sponsorships. Setting Television broadcasts of the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Finland, France, Mexico, Spain and the United States. Cases Eighty-seven alcohol advertisements20 matches. Measurements Quantitative rating scales, combined with the Delphi rating technique, were used to determine compliance of the alcohol advertisements with the International Alliance for Responsible Drinking's (IARD) Guiding Principles. Recordings of five matches from four countries were also used to identify the number of in-and out-of-game alcohol brand appearances. Findings A total of 86.2% of all unique alcohol advertisements contained at least one violation of IARD's Guiding Principles, with violation rates ranging from 72.7% (Mexico) to 100% (Brazil). Countries with the least restrictive marketing policies had a higher prevalence of violations in guidelines designed to protect minors. There were 2.76 in-game alcohol brand appearances and 0.83 out-of-game alcohol brand appearances per minute. Brand appearances did not differ across countries or according to a country's marketing policy restrictiveness. Conclusions Self-regulation and statutory policies were ineffective at limiting alcohol advertising during the 2014 FIFA World Cup Tournament television broadcasts. Most advertisements contained content that violated the self-regulation codes, and there were high levels of within broadcast brand appearances.Pan American Health OrganizationAlcohol Research UKInstitute of Alcohol StudiesUniv Connecticut, Sch Med, Dept Community Med & Hlth Care, Farmington, CT USAUniv Fed Sao Paulo, Dept Psychiat, Sao Paulo, BrazilPan Amer Hlth Org, Alcohol & Subst Abuse, Washington, DC USADepartment of Psychiatry, Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP), São Paulo, BrazilPAHO: SC-14-02239Web of Scienc

Exploring the Impact of Galaxy Interactions over Seven Billion Years with CAS

We explore galaxy assembly over the last seven billion years by characterizing "normal" galaxies along the Hubble sequence, against strongly disturbed merging/interacting galaxies with the widely used CAS system of concentration (C), asymmetry (A), and 'clumpiness' (S) parameters, as well as visual classification. We analyze Hubble Space Telescope (HST) ACS images of ~4000 intermediate and high mass (> 10^9 solar masses) galaxies from the GEMS survey, one of the largest HST surveys conducted to date in two filters. We explore the effectiveness of the CAS criteria [A>S and A>~0.35] in separating normal and strongly disturbed galaxies at different redshifts, and quantify the recovery and contamination rate. We also compare the average star formation rate and the cosmic star formation rate density as a function of redshift between normal and interacting systems identified by CAS.Comment: ASP conference proceedings of 2007 Bash Symposium. Latex with asp2006.sty. 4 pages, 4 figure