Advertising Alcohol Essay

Alcohol has appeared in UK as well as around the world for many years. It plays a significant rule in the life of human. As British Medical Association in 2009, people in UK is the most of alcohol users in Europe. However, like other addictive substances, abuse of alcohol will bring a lot of bad consequences for people. Timms (2013) claimed that alcohol is the cause of psychosis, dementia, and physical problem. There are some people who claimed that government is not authorized to control the advertising of alcohol stricter than other products, but some were in the other idea that government should do it because of the bad impact from alcohol advertising to those who watch it, especially young people. This essay is aim to clarify the opinion that alcohol will result negative effect for human heath as well as social life and its advertising need to be restricted by government. Firstly, except useful of alcohol to people life, alcohol is cause of many negative problems. It is a fact that alcohol was used in to many industries such as food, heath service, and research also. Alcohol may good for heath with a limit amount. With reference from NIH (2003), in a great number of male surveyed, those who drank more than three times a week will have fewer heath risk than others who just drank less than once a week. However, according to Kenny (2012), people should not drink alcohol too much everyday. For instance, the limit of alcohol, which accepted by government, is 150–200ml for men and 100-150ml for women. Base on each habitus, drinking more than that unit may lead to sign of headache, dizzy, sickness, loss of control, etc. To reference from Hall’s research last year, 25% of deaths increase in the last ten years was caused by alcohol. It showed that most of people cannot control their drinking, and this number is increasing day by day. Thus, it is important to limit alcohol use. Secondly, alcoholics are threatening to the social life. It may be noted that drinking alcohol is dangerous not only for people but also their family. A lot of social evil and family violence are come from drunken people. When drinking too much wine or beer, the phenomenon of losing control will appear. Then, the drinker may have negative activities to people around. For example, according to Aquarius, 30% of sexual harassments were affected by alcohol. Furthermore, unfortunately, almost alcoholic was the cause of increasing unemployment (Macpherson, 1988). Then it tends to the thievery when alcoholics do not have money to buy alcohol. From those reasons, it is clear to see that alcohol is truly a hazard to people. Turning to the other side, advertising of alcohol will also bring the bad effect to people. Alcohol advertisement, like other product’s advertisement, is aim to approach people and persuade them to buy as much as possible. Actually, most of alcohol advertising content was received great evaluation from people under 23 years old (Jernigan, 2010). On the other hand, although people know the negative of using alcohol, promotion by any way will make them tend to use it naturally. Wilby (2008) claimed that people are strong affected by advertising of alcohol because they are easily to receive information provided by this advertisement. Advertising of alcohol makes people, especially the youth, image that it is the daily product. Moreover, Jernigan (2010) believed that almost alcohol companies tried to insert the combination of unmeasured features relative to cultural, religious and regulatory context on their advertising. Thus, they try using it everyday like the case that they saw on advertising. In British Medical Association (2009), researchers said â€Å"alcohol advertising and promotion increases the likelihood that adolescents will start to use alcohol and to drink more if they are already using alcohol†. Therefore, if alcohol companies are all free to do advertising by their own way, it will be dangerous for customer insight. Finally, alcohol advertising needs to be limited to protect customer from the wrong perception about wine or beer. In fact, alcohol companies have right to do advertise like other product in market. The more alcohol that they sold, the more money of tax government can earn. Follow HMRC (2013), alcohol products brought a huge number of revenue to UK, which is ? 3,323m from April to July 2013. This number illustrated for the great tax revenue that government earned from alcohol companies. However, the damage to people heath and life are bigger than that. Government had to pay more for the accident and medical insurance that come from effect of drinking too much alcohol. Therefore, limitation to the advertising content of alcohol is really necessary. In practice, government represents for the right of people, so they need to intervene to alcohol advertising for protecting customer. Although government cannot absolutely ban all the advertising of alcohol, they need to control it. For example, Hall (2012) believed that alcohol marketing â€Å"require that ads not link alcohol with sex, social success, youth culture or juvenile behavior†. In conclusion, the essay focused on difference points of whether alcohol advertising should be restricted or not, and the role of government in this situation. Obviously, whether drinking alcohol is good or not depends largely on the awareness of people who use it. Nevertheless, advertising this product widely on media will cause many bad impacts. For that reason, the strict guidelines and regulation for alcohol advertising is really needed. The government should strictly control this kind of product as well as develop propagandize for people about using alcohol in the right way. Apart from that, government also can impose more heavy taxes upon alcohol goods. This can force customer to use less alcohol and increase national income at the same time. References AQUARIUS (n. d. ) Alcohol and Violence [WWW] Aquarius. Available from: http://www. aquarius. org. uk/alcoholandviolence [Accessed 02/09/2013]. BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION (2009) Under the influence: the damaging effect of alcohol marketing on young people [WWW] Available from: http://www.alcohollearningcentre. org. uk/_library/undertheinfluence_tcm41-1900621. pdf [Accessed 24/08/13]. HALL, E. (2012) Sobering up the U. K. proves difficult. Advertising Age, 83 (17), pp. 9. HMRC (2013) Tax and Duty Bulletins [WWW] HM Revenue & Customs. Available from: https://www. uktradeinfo. com/Statistics/Pages/TaxAndDutybulletins. aspx [Accessed 01/09/2013]. JERNIGAN, D. (2010) The extent of global alcohol marketing and its impact on youth. Contemporary Drug Problems, 37 (1), pp. 57-89. MACPHERSON, N (1988) The Effect of Alcoholism on Earning Capacity [WWW] Economica. Available from: http://www. economica. ca/ew03_2p1. htm [Accessed 02/09/2013]. NIH (2003) Frequency of Light-to-Moderate Drinking Reduces Heart Disease Risk in Men [WWW] NIH. Available from: http://www. nih. gov/news/pr/jan2003/niaaa-08. htm [Accessed 31/08/2013]. Timms, P. (2013) Alcohol and depression [WWW] Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Public Education Editorial Board. Available from: http://www. rcpsych. ac. uk/mentalhealthinfoforall/problems/alcoholanddrugs/alcoholdepression. aspx [Accessed 31/08/2013]. WILBY, P. (2008) Under the influence. New Statesman, 137 (4887), pp. 17.