Ethics and economics of alcohol marketing to minors

Economic issues in Alcohol: Marketing, Business & Money

The ethics and economics of marketing alcohol to consumers who can legally consume it and even to those who are under age is discussed in the article the Economic Issues in Alcohol: Marketing, Business & Money (Hanson, 2010). This article is divided into sections including coverage of the economic costs of alcohol abuse, alcohol taxes, Sunday alcohol sales and blue laws, alcohol marketing/advertising/sales and other alcohol beverage economic issues. The article's resources portray alcohol from a purely economic and market-driven standpoint, at times contradicting the ethical boundaries of selling these products to those who might be harmed by them, minors being the most pervasively mentioned throughout the resources and statistics defined.

Assessing the Economic Costs of Alcohol Abuse

This section walks a fine line of ethicacy in the name of profits. It is unethical to sell alcohol to minors and endanger their health and the safety of those around them in the event they attempt to drive while drunk. While the statistics show that an underage person can be held liable for a business being cited and fined for serving underage drinkers, this statistic shows a hypocrisy to marketing that would doom a business to fail quickly. There is no value-add or measure of incremental value to the consumer in any of these statistics; no augmenting or strengthening of their lives. These statistics show that through legal maneuvering and unethical business practices, the entire value chain of liquor, from manufacturing through distribution, can absolve itself from responsibility for the outcome of its products on consumers. The fact that many liquor manufacturers do regularly engage underage drinking-based marketing strategies and generate, in aggregate, the $12.7B net economic gain, there is no lasting value delivered to the consumer. This opens up and interesting ethical and professional question: selling liquor or other harmful substances to underage consumers merely manipulative or true marketing? Interesting debate and from the article, it appears that the delivery of value to under-age consumers is not a consideration.

On the Issue of Alcohol Taxes

The series of resources provided here show why any business needs to have less government regulation in order to flourish. In these series of data sources there is less of the ethical vs. economic paradox as is found in other resources listed in the article. The fact that many Alabama counties are in fact "wet" despite the blue laws saying otherwise further underscore the point of less taxation being good for all businesses, not just those involved in liquor (Hanson, 2010).

Sunday Alcohol Sales and Blue Laws

Of all points made in this section, the abolishment of blue laws in 11 states in the last 2 1/2 years and the sales of alcohol in two-thirds of all states on Sunday shows how legislation, over time, changes to reflect the dominant political and ethical thought of the time. The decision on the part of state and county governments to open up Sundays has more to do with their need for tax revenues and less about the conflict with the Christian Sabbath (Hanson, 2010).

Other Alcohol Beverage Economic Issues

The last section lacks credibility as it attempts to provide interlinking points of higher income and greater career success with a higher level of drinking. That correlation is just as valid as saying someone who eats chicken tacos for lunch will make more money and be more successful, which is completely ridiculous. The lack of precision in these data resources is so strong that one cannot take them seriously. Far greater series of skills are required to be successful in a career than just drinking more. The issue of social skills and communication for example play far more into these issues than any amount of just drinking, to say nothing of continual education and learning. Finally, the article ends on an ethically sound and useful data resource, and that is the cost of a DUI ticket and conviction. In seeing how DUI directly impacts a person, it is amazingly costly, debilitating to their ability to work as it costs so much in time to get anywhere with a license revoked, and is incredibly painful emotionally too.