Exposure to alcohol advertising is an everyday occurrence. Alcohol advertising is persuasive not only to adults but to those who are too young to buy and drink alcohol legally. Parents and peers have a large impact on youths decisions to drink, but marketing also has a great impact by influencing the attitudes of children and their peers, as well as helping to create an environment that promotes underage drinking. Alcohol companies spend billions of dollars on advertising their products through the most powerful tool, the television, seeing, almost everyone who lives America has a television. Alcohol is the most commonly used drug in the United States. Alcohol companies generate more than sixty-five billion dollars a year in revenue, and spend way over one billion dollars a year on advertising alcoholic beverages. With all this knowledge alcohol companies and marketing industries still claim that the effect is minimal. I strongly disagree with this claim and believe that alcohol companies along with alcohol advertising industries directly target minors in an unscrupulous manor. .
Marketing industries, such as alcohol advertising industries, see the money in youth, and help corporations gain access to it. There are three main market groups they use to sell. There is the "primary" market where kids directly control and spend. The "influence" market which is the amount of parental spending that children can directly or indirectly influence. And there is the "future" market, which is the purchasing that children will do for the rest of their lives. These industries created the shift in our thinking from viewing children as trusting, impressionable humans that should be protected from the not so innocent adult world, to seeing children as "economic resources to be mined." (www.commercialalert.org) .
Alcohol promotions target youth and encourages positive affiliations with alcohol by linking drinking alcohol with attractive symbols and role models.