A win for health and safety: NBC wisely puts the lid back on hard liquor ads

The network did the right thing by choosing to drop the ads once more.

Editorial. April 15, 2002.

NBC's recent reversal on accepting hard liquor ads is a notable and very welcome corporate expression of social responsibility.

The Peacock network initially showed poor judgment when it announced late last year that it would air hard liquor ads. The decision broke with a half-century of sensible and honorable restraint by national broadcasters in not airing such ads.

Television is an enormously attractive and persuasive medium to young people. Children and adolescents average more than 1,000 hours a year in front of the television screen.

Adding hard liquor ads to the commercial mix would only have contributed to the well-documented problems of alcohol use at too young an age. As it is, alcohol-related accidents, homicides and suicides claim the lives of thousands of young people yearly, and drinking affects many others in less dramatic but nevertheless damaging ways.

The AMA underscored these points when it became one of the most vocal opponents of NBC's decision to run the ads. The concerns raised by the medical and public health communities, and others, apparently resonated with lawmakers in Congress and hearings were threatened. NBC wisely backed down.

The anti-ad campaign was not only a striking win for the health and safety of the nation's young people, but it is a model of effective advocacy that unquestionably will be needed again. [...]