Duh...*hic

A new study reports that increased ad spending leads to more underage drinking. Not exactly groundbreaking news except for these parts: "The results also contradict claims that advertising is unrelated to youth drinking amounts: that advertising at best causes brand switching, only affects those older than the legal drinking age or is effectively countered by current educational efforts." And: "The study "calls into question the industry's argument that its roughly $1.8 billion in measured media expenditures per year have no impact on underage drinking."

Who accepts these "claims" and "arguments?" And if they're that bad, can they really be called arguments? Does anyone really think that somehow people under 21 are immune to advertising? Seriously, $1.8 BILLION has no impact on underage drinking? Can you just make any random claim or argument, no matter how dumb, and make it stick so well that it takes a study to refute it? Can't we all just say, "hey, I know you're getting paid to defend this, but I'm not drunk."

Actually, I get the alchohol industry's problem. It's a perfectly legal activity if you're over 21, but how do you advertise to just that demographic? Tobacco basically can't use ads and losing Winston Cup was plane idiotic. Personally, I think if its legal, you should get to try to build your product base. If its so bad you can't advertise it, make it illegal. But we all know how that goes. So we all just listen to these really bad arguements and pretend they make sense. Because if we don't the illogic of it all overwhelms us.

Well this blog doesn't tolerate illogic.