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 puzzles 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 race aged 15-2,9 years comprised 26% of the world's population (i), this age cluster 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 means 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 collection 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 clan (3-5), as well as the inability to succe in gymnasium (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 race has been linked with sexual victimization (iz) as well as early assault of sexual activity (10). Research primarily from the United States allude tos that there are numerous risks associated with early initiation of alcohol use, including placing young family at higher risk both of developing alcohol interdependence (13) and of suffering alcohol-related injury later in life (14) Heavy exposing 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 mates (18).

This special section focuses upon a critical aspect of youth drinking: alcohol marketing and young race 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 means 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 disclosure 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 inundations 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 development in the message's exposure and influence) and the Internet, mobile phone texting and branded events

The alcohol market has traditionally consisted of three marks of beverages: distilled spirits (also confineed "spirits" or "liquor"), wine, and beer. The industry has brought to markets in unraveled and developing countries new harvests 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 fix 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 clan public health research and replications have failed to keep pace with this rapidly accelerating global marketing landscape. Although tobacco researchers have begun to explore the impact of these novel marketing tactics on youth smoking, alcohol researchers have mainly ignored them. Tobacco control advocates have similarly made significant gains at the pair national and global levels in winning restraints above tobacco marketing; in contrast, regulation of alcohol marketing, with a not many exceptions, is mostly left to alcohol companies themselves or to the marketplace.

The articles in this special section show 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 of recent origin product categories, new research tools for monitoring and reducing youth in all senses to alcohol advertising, research into policy answers and gaps, and the character of international trade agreements in restricting the policy solutions available to public health. A commentary by dint of Dr. David Kessler, a leading advocate for the health of children above many years, provides a adjoining matter 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 by the agency of an outside reviewer, as well as by means of the Editors of the Journal.