Budweiser Wants You to Croak While You Boat

Budweiser wants to be the sum of your summer. Their summer billboard ads encouraging us to drink while boating are the latest installment in their reckless promotion that every recreational activity is more fun with beer. If you don’t believe that boating and boozing is a problem, type in “boating and alcohol deaths” in Googles News Search; today, I found 51 articles. The Oregon State Marine Board reports that alcohol is involved in about 30 percent of boating fatalities in Oregon each year, 50-70 percent nationwide. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, alcohol is involved in about 25% to 50% of adolescent and adult deaths associated with water recreation. Without question, campaigns, like Budweiser’s, linking recreation with beer, send a dangerous, contradictory message to us all.

In the prevention world, we know activities, like music, recreation, and art promote health and offer an alternative to alcohol and drugs, but these beer billboards unscrupulously link alcohol use with the enhancement of recreation.

“Hey Johnny don’t smoke pot, go Rollerblading, and finish it off with a low-carb beer.”

“Dad, let’s go Jet skiing!”

“Great son! I’ll get the beer!”

Does this sound ridiculous? Amazingly, we allow these ideas to be advertised every single day. Can you imagine if next year’s Superbowl was brought to you by the Methamphetamine Cooks of America? What if a cigarette company sponsored the Race for the Cure? Yet every weekend the alcohol industry sponsors competitive car racing…and we scratch our heads and wonder why people continue to drink and drive.

It takes more than raising awareness about alcohol’s dangers to stop the alcohol industry’s harebrained campaigns or stifle their product tie-ins. If Budweiser can’t abide by the Beer Institute’s Marketing and Advertising Code that states beer advertising “should not portray or imply illegal activity of any kind,” then, we need to enforce common sense public policies that restrict the beer industry’s messages to the public. It is illegal, not to mention extremely dangerous, to drink and drive, yet we allow Budweiser to sponsor NASCAR Drivers. It is illegal and dangerous to drink and boat, yet Budweiser is bombarding us with billboards with boats cruising in a sea of beer.

Is there any part of our society that hasn’t been wooed by the alcohol industry? The industry’s ads mock our elections, our relationships, and our efforts to keep alcohol away from kids. It is extremely difficult to check out a music festival, sporting event, website, magazine, or community fair that is free from alcohol advertising. Right now, it seems the only place free of alcohol is the local news where methamphetamine reports are as regular as the weather forecast.

If our leaders choose to ignore how the alcohol industry lampoons our values and promotes unlawful behavior like Budweiser’s current billboards, next summer we can expect Budweiser to sponsor alcohol use and water safety classes to ensure safe summer fun.

Max Margolis is the director of Oregon Partnership's YouthLink Program, which provides innovative and accurate prevention services to students through out Oregon.