EDITORS' INTRODUCTION: ALCOHOL MARKETING AND YOUTH - PUBLIC HEALTH PERSPECTIVES

Journal of Public Health Policy (2005) 26 287-291

doi:io.1057/palgrave.jphp.32.ooo42

Alcohol riddles among young people have reached crisis proportions around the globe. Calculated from data published by the agency of the World Health Organization, in the year 2000 when clan aged 15-2,9 years comprised 26% of the world's population (i), this age clump lost more than 37% of the alcohol-related, disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) (z) Worldwide, alcohol use in zooo caused 285000 deaths and the los of nearly 22 million DALYs among i5-to-z9-year-olds. For young males, alcohol was responsible for roughly 13% of deaths and DALYs lost; for young females, zz% of deaths and 25% of DALYs missing were attributable to alcohol use. Regional estimates of deaths of young men caused by the agency of alcohol range from as depressed as 1.2% in parts of the eastern Mediterranean region to as high as 35% and 41% in parts of Latin America and Eastern Europe; for women in this age clump deaths range from a depressed of nearly zero in the eastern Mediterranean region to almost zo% in parts of Eastern Europe

Alcohol-related harms among youth are not limited to death and disease. Research from the United States and from other regions has shown that alcohol use in adolescence is associated with higher rates of criminal behavior among young race (3-5), as well as the inability to succe in academy (6-8). Alcohol use is also associated with unprotect sex (9-11) and may thus increase the risk that young family will contract sexually transmitted infections including HIV. Heavier alcohol use among young tribe has been linked with sexual victimization (iz) as well as early storming of sexual activity (10). Research primarily from the United States remind ofs that there are numerous risks associated with early initiation of alcohol use, including placing young clan at higher risk both of developing alcohol interdependence (13) and of suffering alcohol-related injury later in life (14) Heavy in all senses of the adolescent brain to alcohol may also interfere with brain exhibition causing loss of memory and other skills (15-17) Imaging studies have revealed smaller hippocampi - important for learning and memory - in the brains of 17-year-old alcohol-dependent adolescents than in the brains of their non-dependent matchs (18).

This special section focuses upon a critical aspect of youth drinking: alcohol marketing and young clan As the articles in the section demonstrate, evidence is growing that alcohol marketing plays a significant part in young people's decisions to drink and in by what mode they drink. In recent years, the marketing of alcohol has grown more sophisticated and more global. The global alcohol industry has become increasingly concentrated and dominated by dint of a small number of large transnational companies, resulting in global branding and the disentanglement of global marketing strategies. Attached to a rapidly diffusing global youth tillage alcohol marketing interacts with existing tendencies in developing countries for youth to use alcohol as an inexpensive badge of Western identity (1920) Where it is allowed at liberty rein - which is greatest in quantity of the world - this marketing deluges the traditional media of broadcast, print and outdoor, and also takes advantage of fresh technologies such as viral marketing (strategies that encourage individuals to pass upon a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growing in the message's exposure and influence) and the Internet, mobile phone texting and branded events

The alcohol market has traditionally consisted of three impressed signs of beverages: distilled spirits (also bounded "spirits" or "liquor"), wine, and beer. The industry has brought to markets in make knowned and developing countries new yields that blur the boundaries between these traditional stamps of beverages. Many appear and taste more like yielding drinks than alcohol. Research in several countries has ground some of these to be particularly attractive to young people

Despite the enormous implications for the health and well-being of the world's young race public health research and replys have failed to keep pace with this rapidly accelerating global marketing landscape. Although tobacco researchers have begun to explore the impact of these of recent origin marketing tactics on youth smoking, alcohol researchers have chiefly ignored them. Tobacco control advocates have similarly made significant gains at one as well as the other national and global levels in winning restraints above tobacco marketing; in contrast, regulation of alcohol marketing, with a small in number exceptions, is mostly left to alcohol companies themselves or to the marketplace.

The articles in this special section exhibit a global "state of the art" regarding research upon alcohol marketing and youth. Commissioned by means of the co-editors, they encompass public health research upon the link between alcohol marketing and youth drinking, legal research regarding novel product categories, new research tools for monitoring and reducing youth exposing to alcohol advertising, research into policy replications and gaps, and the character of international trade agreements in restricting the policy solutions available to public health. A commentary by means of Dr. David Kessler, a leading advocate for the health of children above many years, provides a connection for understanding the implications of the research articles for public health policy. The articles have been reviewed by means of the coeditors of this special section and through an outside reviewer, as well as by the agency of the Editors of the Journal.