‘Pernicious marketers’ selling alcopops to kids are the worst.

Last person I need talking about the evil advertising industry is a politician. Looks like alcohol ads will now be restricted a little more with the efforts to eliminate cartoon characters that appeal to kids with such brands as Mike’s Hard Lemonade. (For the 10 readers out there who may not know, there’s no legal requirement for alcohol brands to stop advertising. It’s been a voluntary effort for them to police themselves. Only in the early to mid nineties did brands really crank their TV advertising back up big time after a long hiatus.) Ummmmmmmmmmmm...sokay, after taking a breath I can only say “WTF?”

No, I don’t support underage drinking, but Bud never had cute characters back in the day and I’m pretty sure it was the first brush with alcohol many of us had. Maybe even a sip of wine before dinner when mom was in the kitchen and dad said it’d be okay?

Teens drink to get a buzz, period. That it’s ‘cool,’ that it’s available are important reasons, yes, but secondary ones. No kid smoked or drank because of an illustration. I didn’t. Kids and teens aren’t huffing Pledge because of some cute character. Kids aren’t drinking cough syrup either because the colors are Awesome!

Like all good products, it was word of mouth. Then came the feeling good part when the buzz kicked in. Some kids will keep doing it after that, others will walk away from it, but it has nothing to do with how cool an ad is.

This is the brilliance behind the PRMC ratings system for music. Well-intentioned but it never prevented the so-called objectionable material like they thought it would–it only identified it. You want to help kids senators? Stop wasting our time with this bullshit and fund more teen centers so they have something to do on Friday and Saturday nights, and maybe they won’t go looking through the kitchen cabinets because they’re bored out of their minds.

Tell you another thing: senators can ban characters in alcohol ads right after banning them in pharma. How many cute flying insects, wizards and other iconic cartoon characters are there for medications that have ended up killing people. Focus on the FDA and why it rushes a drug to market because of pressure from pharma companies who then might have to pull it after more than an ‘acceptable amount’ of people die from using it.

Do that and then you can go after Mike and his Hard Lemonade all you want.