Calls to scrap outdoor ads for alcohol as a third of secondary school children went binge drinking in the past month

A third of secondary school children have engaged in binge drinking in the past month, including almost a quarter of teens aged 13 to 15. A new study on youth drinking and the impact of marketing on their alcohol habits also found almost three-quarters of the 686 teenagers surveyed said they intended to drink when they reach 18.

Nine out of 10 children are being exposed to alcohol advertising weekly and half of all children see four or more advertisements for alcohol every day.

The findings have led to a call for outdoor alcohol advertising to be scrapped and for new rules to come in to play regarding online and broadcast marketing.

Researchers from the Health Promotion Research Centre at NUI Galway found 77% of children surveyed said they had been exposed to alcohol marketing online and most had been specifically invited to engage with alcohol marketeers on social media, with 35% saying they had been invited to ‘like’ an alcohol brand.

In a foreword, entitled ‘Alcohol Marketing and Young People’s Drinking Behaviour in Ireland’, Patrick Kenny of the School of Marketing at Dublin Institute of Technology said the figures were alarming and indicated existing regulatory codes aimed at preventing the targeting of young people “are not protecting children from exposure to alcohol marketing”.

Dr Kenny said several alcohol brands had directed “significant marketing spend into the digital sphere” and that “digital marketing operates largely ‘under the radar’ of policy- makers as they do not form part of the target audience, thus making digital marketing significantly harder to monitor or regulate”.

The report, commissioned by Alcohol Action Ireland, uses data collected from 686 secondary school children aged 13 to 17, from 16 different schools.