Standard Drinks Equivalence Alcohol and Health Underage Drinking Distilled Spirits Advertising Distilled Spirits Excise Taxes Product Tasting Fact Sheet

Several federal agencies and academic experts have weighed in on the issue of advertising and consumption. Advertising has not been shown to cause an individual to begin drinking or to abuse beverage alcohol.

Experts and the U.S. Government Report No Link Between Advertising and Consumption or Abuse.

• A 1990 U.S. Health and Human Services report to Congress states that "[r]esearch has yet to document a strong relationship between alcohol advertising and alcohol consumption."
• A 1985 study by the Federal Trade Commission found "no reliable basis to conclude that alcohol advertising significantly affects consumption, let alone abuse" and that "[a]bsent such evidence, there is no basis for concluding that rules banning or otherwise limiting alcohol advertising would offer significant protection to the public."
• Dr. Enoch Gordis, Director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism stated in a 1992 meeting of the "Working Group on the Effects of Mass Media on the Use and Abuse of Alcohol:" "...the dominant issue is this: Does advertising initiate drinking in the young? Common sense says the beer industry appeals to the young ... But common sense and science don't meet on this."
• Former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs in 1989 and said: "Is there compelling scientific evidence that advertising influences alcohol consumption and the nature and level of alcohol-related problems? No there is not..."
• A study conducted for the Joint Committee of the States to Study Alcoholic Beverage Laws found "the restrictiveness of [state] advertising control had no effect upon per capita consumption of alcohol beverages." Similar results have been found for British Columbia, Manitoba, Norway, Finland and the (former) Soviet Union.
• In 1991, the Journal of Studies on Alcohol compared beverage alcohol sales in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan before and after an almost total advertising ban was ended in 1983. The study found no proof "that alcohol advertising is a contributory force that influences the overall level of consumption of alcoholic beverages."
• In testimony before the Consumer Subcommittee of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee in 1992, Dr. Martin P. Block, Professor in the Integrated Advertising Marketing Communications Program in the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, declared: "Most importantly, from my review of the scientific literature I can find no persuasive evidence that advertising causes non-drinkers to start drinking, or that advertising causes drinkers to become abusers. In fact, based on the results of our content analysis, if anything the advertisements we studied would reinforce only moderate consumption, because that was virtually all that was portrayed in the ads."
• American Enterprise Institute Adjunct Scholar John E. Calfee stated in testimony before the House of Representatives: "In nations such as Russia ...alcoholism among all age groups has reached tragic proportions without the slightest assistance from advertising. Indeed, available evidence indicates little if any effects from legislated bans on alcohol advertising."