Oz govt to tackle teen binge-drinking with ads aimed at parents

Sydney, June 20 : Australian government is set to introduce an ad campaign targeted at parents, in a bid to tackle the binge-drinking problem among teenagers.

The 3.5 million dollar campaign will highlight how hard drinking in the home can make teenagers alcohol abusers.

Health Minister, Nicola Roxon, has denied her own Grim Reaper-style ad campaign - which the Prime Minister said would "scare the living daylights" out of binge-drinking teenagers - had fallen behind schedule.

A spokesman for Ms Roxon said the 20 million dollars ad campaign was "well under way" and the Government had been in discussions with several agencies, but did not say exactly what progress had been made.

"We need this campaign to really make a difference. It's important to invest some time to do the intensive research needed to get it right," the Sydney Morning Herald quoted the spokesman, as saying.

The organisation behind it, DrinkWise, which promotes responsible drinking, found that social marketers had overlooked the role of parents in influencing their children's attitudes towards alcohol.

It said forty per cent of the alcohol that parents of teenagers drink is consumed at home and one in three teenagers cited their parents as the greatest influence on how much they drank.

The ad to be screened on June 22, features four men standing around the barbecue, stubbies in hand, chatting about a recent "big night". One calls to his son to get him another beer from a well-stocked fridge.

The next scene shows the boy, now a grown man, slugging from the bottle as he returns to his mates. He then turns to his son to ask him to get him a beer.

"We need people to recognise something familiar about the scene," said Ricci Meldrum of Clemenger BBDO, which made the ad.

"If we had used pictures of people being intoxicated and falling over themselves, people would just turn off and say, 'Well, that's not me.' This is about getting people to question their own drinking habits," he added.

DrinkWise's chief executive, Mike McAvoy, denied his message would be drowned out by the volume of alcohol advertising.

ANI