While alcohol is a phenomenon deeply embedded in college culture, students don't just arrive at a university and suddenly acquire the desire to drink.

By the time students get to college, 30 to 50 percent of them are already binge drinking, and it only increases from there.

The seeds of the alcohol culture are sown much earlier than freshman year or high school. From the time Americans are small children, the media bombard them with movies, magazines and advertisements that portray drinking as glamorous, desirable and sexy.

"We all act in some sort of way-how we think we should act- and the question is, where do we get those ideas of how we should act?" said Sut Jhally, a communication professor at the University of Massachusetts and executive director for the Media Education Foundation. "It comes from watching adults, it comes from alcohol being so freely available in people's homes, it comes from the media."

Society has been so desensitized to alcohol it may consider it a rite of passage instead of the serious problem that it is, said Catherine Bath, executive director of Security On Campus Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to safe campuses for college and university students.

"The generation that is in college now was raised on the Budweiser frogs and Spuds McKenzie," Bath said. "Is it any wonder that they think getting drunk is fun?"

effects of the industry

Alcohol companies pour millions and millions of dollars into the advertising industry in order to pull in more and more drinkers. And it works.

"If you want to know how much the media impacts people, look at how much money is spent trying to advertise stuff," Jhally said.

In 2002, the alcohol industry spent $5.7 billion on alcohol advertising and promotion, according to Georgetown's Center for Alcohol Marketing to Youth, a non-profit organization that monitors the practices of the alcohol industry.

"Every single day, 7,000 kids under age 16 take their first drink, and $6 billion of alcohol advertising and marketing each year isn't helping," said Jim O'Hara, executive director of CAMY.

The alcohol industry is very clever with its advertising, said Teresa Collado, associate director of the Norman Alcohol Information Center.

"The alcohol commercials are the best commercials on TV," she said. "They're humorous, they're witty and it works."

Alcohol ads are so effective because they clearly link alcohol with good times, Jhally said.

"We are shown a highly glamorized world where someone is good looking and someone is in control and drinking all the time," he said.

The reality of alcohol is different from what ads reveal.

"[Alcohol] gets you in trouble, it gets you hurt, it gets you killed sometimes," Collado said.

The prevalence of alcohol ads in the media make it seem like drinking is a part of American culture, said Lindsay Brend, human relations junior.

"It makes it acceptable. It makes it seem like you are the exception to the rule if you don't want to drink," she said.

However, Brend said she doesn't think people base their decision to drink on what they see in the media.

"People who drink drink because they like how it feels to them, but the advertisements just validate their lifestyle," she said.

targeting the underage

Not only does the alcohol industry influence youth, but it purposely targets them, Bath said.

"Before kids even know what beer is, they are getting this concept in their brain that beer is fun," she said.

A 1996 study conducted by the Center on Alcohol Advertising at Berkeley found that children aged 9 to 11 were more familiar with Budweiser's television frogs than Kellogg's Tony the Tiger, the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers or Smokey the Bear.

Alcohol ads are also strategically placed, Collado said. At convenience stores, the ads are put at a child's eye level.

"They are recruiting [children], so when it's their time to make the choice, they'll choose their product," Collado said.

The college crowd is another big target of the alcohol industry.

"The reason they advertise so much to college students is they figure that once they've got them in college, they've got them in life," Jhally said. "It's like buying an annuity."

There is a huge amount of pressure on college students, particularly college men, to drink, he said.

"It's the idea that the more you drink, the more of a man you are," Jhally said. "That message is everywhere in popular culture."

Drinking underage is a social norm in American culture, one that is tolerated and even encouraged in college, Bath said.

The law, which states that no one under 21 can drink, isn't congruent with the culture.

"The social norm is that it's OK to drink under 21," Collado said.

The culture of drinking is also derived from parents. Parents are often relieved that their teens are "just drinking" and not using harder drugs like cocaine, Collado said.

"But the reality is that there are more deaths from alcohol than from all other illegal drugs combined," she said.

deep impact

While research has clearly shown the link between advertising and drinking, many young people don't realize how much ads impact their decisions to drink.

"It affects you so deeply that you don't even know it affects you," Bath said. "You don't know why you are making these ridiculous life-risking decisions to drink. You don't know why you have to have alcohol at a party to have fun."

Brend said she would like to think the media did not influence her views on drinking.

"But I had no idea what was going on in my mind when my opinions first formed on alcohol," she said.

Alcohol ads often have a disclaimer at the bottom that urge the viewer to drink responsibly. However, that isn't what the alcohol industry truly wants, because it makes its profit from problem drinkers, Bath said.

"The whole 'drink responsibly' campaign is a public relations tool for their company," Collado said. "It makes them seem like they're not out to hurt people."

If every person in America was of legal drinking age and drank the healthy amount-one drink a day for women and two for men-the alcohol industry's profits would plummet by 80 percent, Jhally said.

The influence of the media has grown in recent decades and will continue to grow, Collado said.

"Whereas before there wasn't TV, or we didn't watch TV as much, now we're going to the movies, we're watching TV, we've got magazines, and we're inundated," she said. "We're just inundated by the media, and we can't help but be affected by that."
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