Alcohol Companies Must Do Better
I’m at a BBQ rifling through the cooler for a non-alcoholic drink. I see a can that looks ‘sober friendly’, but I’m extra diligent because I will not take that risk.
After staring down this can for what felt like forever – sure that people behind me were getting antsy waiting to get to the cooler – I see the words ‘hard seltzer.’ Dammit.
But now I’m fascinated. This can otherwise looks perfectly kid-friendly. Surely there is a warning somewhere that this drink contains alcohol other than the word ‘hard’ on it? But no. No warning except for some teeny tiny font under the ingredients that shows 5.5% alcohol and that drinking while pregnant can be harmful. Why isn’t there a warning that there is NO safe amount of alcohol, according to the Recovery Research Institute?
As I’m walking back to my husband, I see a young man I was just talking to earlier. He had told me he was 15 and just finished middle school. I remember because he was so polite, I was impressed with his maturity. Now I see him holding that same hard seltzer drink I had just seen in the cooler, and I wonder if he knew what hard seltzer even meant.
Maybe he does and he wanted a drink with alcohol. Maybe his parents don’t care. Or maybe it’s an innocent mistake, and he grabbed the drink that looked perfectly harmless the same way it seemed to me at first.
I just read a stat that people who started drinking before age 15 were 50% more likely to become alcohol dependent as adults (source: NIAAA). To see this young man drinking this same drink that almost tricked me felt especially worrisome.
Why isn’t better labelling required on alcohol? Is it because the sooner the alcohol industry can hook someone the bigger their profits? Do they see a 15 year old and think “gold mine?”
Alcohol companies need to do better. Whether is a person in recovery or a kid just grabbing a drink at a family BBQ, using sly marketing tactics to minimize a drug is dangerous.
My husband spoke to the boy’s father, and I moved on to other things that afternoon, but I saw the young man sitting alone under a tree a little later and I wondered if he was OK. I was about the same age when I took my first drink, too. The difference was, I knew what I was signing up for and maybe this boy didn’t. And that’s a choice someone deserves to make on their own – when they’re ready, and knowing the risks.