Recently in our area we had 2 young guys ( ages 21 and 24 ).
One Friday night the two of them decided to celebrate the ones birthday. Since he is now "legal" being 21 they decided to go bar hopping.

After hitting at least 10 different bars by 4:30am both of them were drunk. Instead of calling the cab ( the last bar they were at had a rule that bars customers from using their phone nor were they allowed to make calls for their customers ) they decided to drive home. Only 4 miles aways.

You can pretty much guess what happened next.

A few weeks after their deaths, the parents of the 21 year old wrote a letter to the local paper saying that the media is almost to blame for the wreck as the bars. They asked how is it possible to prevent drunk driving when "...one hears so many Coors Light, Icehouse, Bud Lite, "Its Miller Time !!! ads and/or spots for local bars offering free booze and $1 drafts".

They were very upset about a local radio ad in our town for a nearby bar advertising their new drink called "sex'. The ad goes on and on advertsing "free Sex !!" and " You can find "SEX" here. Stop by for "Sex" at **** lounge"and "...drink it up baby..the Sex is on the house".

From what I heard the ads were successful. But also it has raised eyebrows among parents/churches/ and educators as these ads were airing 4 times an hour on the local top 40/ modern rock stations- radio stations that attract young listeners. A good friend of mine teaches fourth grade and even she tells me that she has heard some of her students crack jokes
about "free Sex".

What do you think..
should beer/wine commericals end up like cigarettes/cigars/ and skoal ads-banned from the airwaves?

And what about ads for bars..should they be allowed to advertise their drinks/ happy hour specials?

I live in a small little southern town where people get drunk on just about an everyday basis. I don't think its the ads that make them run out and drink so much they pass out. It's more like a buddy thing. Let's go out and get a few drinks. The few drinks can make them look like total asses, but they still do it. I think if you are 21 or 24 years old, you should have enough common sense to know when to stop and when you've had too much. Come on, if you can't even walk because you are so drunk- shouldn't that send off some kind of small waves to your brain that tells you won't be able to drive the car straight?

Well, you can't advertise cigarettes on TV here and you can't advertise alcohol untill after 9pm but personally I don't think it matters.
Kids know that cigarettes and alcohol exist whether they are advertised or not. Kids also know that if they wanna rebel against their parents/try'n be "cool"/try'n act more "grown up", the quickest way to go about it is to get trashed or start smoking. Banning advertisements for these products isn't gonna change that.

Yeah, I agree, it really has nothing to do with the ads. I don't know who pays attention to those dumb advertisements, but I really don't think it has to do with kids' decisions to just run out and get drunk like that. Kids these days will go and do anything they want... it's stupid, but sadly true. You hear stories all the time.

I see wine and beer commercials alot, but cigarette commercials haven't been on here in about 3 years and we used to have a huge Marlboro sign but the city had to remove it because it was telling people to smoke it on the billboard sign.

actually cigarette ads have been banned from tv/radio in the US since 1971 though you can advertise them online and I do believe that cigarette makers DO pay big bucks to get their products in films-my opinion. people remember Lucy & Ricky selling Phillip Morris but did you know that The Flintstones, Mary Tyler Moore & Dick Van Dyke, Joey Bishop, even game show king Bill Cullen ALL sold cigarettes? I saw on tape once a scene of Fred Flintstone and Wilma talking about those wonderful Winston Cigarettes and the "pure white filter"..very strange to watch today.

Banning the ads themselves is NOT the answer. When cig ads were banned the number of adults smoking didnt go down a whole lot. Now raising the cost of smokes to $4 -$5 a pack ..well that can do it.

No, to me the most ironic thing about the banning of cigarette/cigar ads is that people still can smoke on tv though you cant advertise the product itself. In my opinion its the image of David Letterman and Will Smith ( and many gangsta rappers ) smoking their cigars and popular actor/singers like Kid Rock, Ozzy Osborne, Ben Afflick smoking their cigarettes ( I even saw once a photo of the Backstreet Boys puffing on Marlboro Lights ) that causes many kids to light up. And of course you have peer pressure and parents who smoke as well .

Same with skoal. Whats the purpose of banning such ads when ballplayers and Nascar driver are allowed to dip and chew on tv?

If you are going to ban cigarette ads then ban the product from all televison. And ban all ads of the product too like billboards, direct sales, ect...

Same thing with booze and beer.

Banning beer ads alone wont change a thing. But if this country was really serious about the alcohol problems such as drunk driving ( most people DO have common sense to stop when they have too much to drink but then again you have those who say they can "handle it" when they had 8 or 9 beers ), then force all states to cut off beer/wine sales at 1am and increase the price of of beer/wine/booze both at the bar and in the store. and ban the happy hour and/or free booze and of course enfore the current liquor laws. The way it is now-where I live the beer cut off time is 2am but drive up the interstate 10 miles into the next state the cut off there is 4am and
many of their bars offer free beer. Plus many stores around here sell beer for as low as $3 a six pack and some still sell beer to those under 21 since many stores dont card people- at least the ones around my town. As a result of people bar hopping from state to state and stores who dont care who they sell too- drunk driving is a big problem here.

No. Simple answer why: If someone is stupid enough to drink alcohol because a commercial tells them to, or is "cool" , they're probably at the lower end of the food chain anyway. The alcohol advertisers MUST have a disclaimer saying "Drink responsibly" or "Don't drink and drive." It is not their fault if some imbecile disregards those disclaimers. Just my two cents.

The billions spent on advertising isn't aimed at only stupid people. Advertising works on us all at some level or they wouldn't be spending all of that money. And I wouldn't claim that every drinker or smoker is a stupid person. Alcohol and tobacco ads, although they clearly are intended to convince non-drinkers and non-smokers to take it up, are also trying to sell one brand over another. I'm not sure what would change if beer ads were taken off of TV or if hard liquor and tobacco ads were allowed back on. Probably not much, except we would all be bombarded with a whole new slew of annoying and aggravating, but sometimes entertaining commercials.

Drinking is really lame in the first place. I don't know why people do it. So many people my age drink every weekend, before school, AT school. It's pointless. Plus, it makes you smell and look stupid.

If it weren't for beer commercials we woulda never met the Budweiser frogs!!!!!!!
I think that a person decides THEMSELF to go out and get drunk. The ad isn't posessing them to go out and get drunk like an animal!