Alcohol-Branded Clothing Linked to Early Teen Drinking
By SLJ Staff -- School Library Journal, 3/2/2009 9:00:00 PM
Students walking around school with Budweiser or Heineken emblazoned on T-shirts, hats, or other items of clothing may be cause for concern. Researchers at Dartmouth Medical School have found that they’re 1.5 times more likely to start drinking and to become binge drinkers than kids who don’t own such items.
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Photo: Flickr |
The findings were published in the March issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.
In confidential telephone surveys with 6,522 kids aged 10 to 14, McClure and her team asked students about their drinking behaviors and drinking susceptibility, including peer pressure. In three follow-up surveys, the adolescents were asked about their changes in drinking habits and whether they owned alcohol-branded merchandise.
The percentage of those who said they owned alcohol-branded merchandise ranged from 11 percent at eight months to 20 percent at the 24-month survey, which accounts for 2.1 million to 3.1 million U.S. adolescents, the study says.
The most common item of alcohol branded items was clothing and headwear (88 percent) with beer branded items accounting for 75 percent. Some 45 percent bore the Budweiser label.
Although most of the merchandisewas obtained primarily from friends or family (71 percent), the researchers found that “Alcohol-branded merchandise is widely distributedamong US adolescents, who obtain the items one-quarter of thetime through direct purchase at retail outlets.”
