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.