Shock campaigns ‘can worsen alcohol abuse’

SHOCK campaigns aimed at discouraging young people from drinking alcohol do not work and can have the opposite effect, an international expert on alcohol and drug abuse has warned.

Anne Fox, an anthropologist and an advisor on drinking issues to both the British government and British army, said warning young people about how alcohol would make them behave inevitably resulted in the behaviour being acted out.

Young people like taking risks, particularly the risk of death, to prove themselves, she said. “So the more you associate alcohol and drugs with the risk of death, the more attractive they will be to the young person,” she said.

Shocking young people psychologically into changing their ways did not work either.

“Most young people end up going back to using the substance again because their personal experience tells them that they are not dying and neither are their friends,” she pointed out.

“They (young people) not only reject the information but the credibility of the people giving it, so it does a lot of damage.”

Ms Fox was addressing a conference in Dublin yesterday organised by Mature Enjoyment of Alcohol in Society (MEAS), a lobby group funded by the drinks industry.

She said that while little could be done to change the core of a country’s drinking culture, changes could be made around the periphery that could cause a permanent cultural change over generations.

Ms Fox said changing drinking environments and making it more difficult to behave badly in public could start a cultural change.

“There are a lot of social pressures that could be triggered through legislative action,” she said.