Dress-Up Campaign

Why We Care

These advertising tactics mask the harms and risks of alcohol, such as addiction, depression, health complications, and falls and accidents, and make alcohol more attractive for youth to try. We are concerned about this because data shows that youth can develop brand preferences very early on and the younger people start drinking, the more likely they are to drink alcohol excessively or develop an alcohol use disorder. According to Youth Risk Behavior Survey data from 2019, 10% of youth started drinking before the age of 13 and 21% currently drink alcohol in New Hampshire.

By challenging the alcohol industry’s marketing tactics and unmasking their products to reveal the true harms and consequences, we hope to protect the youth of New Hampshire and youth all over the country from emerging, high-risk products. Alcohol is for adults, dress-up is for kids.

Our Message

Youth to Youth is rolling out a new campaign this year that we’re calling the “Dress-Up Campaign,” to raise awareness of the alcohol industry’s predatory advertising practices, including the creation of high-risk products. We as a group feel that the alcohol industry is dressing-up their products in colorful packaging and candy flavors in order to attract, target, and entice youth to use and abuse their products. We want to hold the industry accountable and say, “Hey, Big Alcohol, dress-up’s for kids,” in hopes that they stop these predatory advertising practices and start marketing their products to adults only.

Youth to Youth classifies emerging, high-risk products as any alcohol product released in the past three years that is highly attractive to youth and promotes excessive consumption. We categorize the emerging, high-risk products into six key concerns. Those areas of concern are: