Submitted by Livia Edegger on
“In England, alcohol is responsible for 1.2 million annual hospital admissions, 15,500 deaths, and an annual cost to the UK National Health Service of £3.5 billion,” and the large sums of money the government is spending on anti-drinking advertising campaign is not bringing the numbers down. Researchers at four UK universities analysed data from a sample of 89 young people in the UK and 200 alcohol advertisements. They found out that anti-drinking messages from the government are dismissed as irrelevant by people who drink excessively because many young people’s behaviour is motivated by the need to subvert rules and norms. Therefore, the researchers suggest that these governmental anti-drinking messages could possibly have the opposite effect of their original intent. The researchers call for more targeted and practical interventions to battle the high numbers of alcohol abuse cases.