It’s looking like the MBTA, which has refused advertisements from groups that educate patients about medical marijuana, may start allowing makers of a highly addictive drug to advertise their wares on the T. From WBUR:
As the MBTA looks to aggressively increase its advertising revenue, Chief Administrator Brian Shortsleeve appears to be laying the groundwork for a proposal to reverse the T’s ban on alcohol advertisements.
The transit agency banned all alcohol ads in 2012, but Shortsleeve told the T’s control board on Monday that allowing alcohol ads was one of the recommendations he was looking at as the T seeks to double ad revenue in the next few years.
While this would certainly raise revenue — the alcohol industry is very well-heeled and always seeking to get more consumers, especially heavy consumers — it wouldn’t be worth it. If you only know me from my work on marijuana legalization, this stance may surprise you, but I’m actually not in favor of advertising for any recreational drug, whether that’s alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, or otherwise.
Our country and state have a serious problem with alcohol abuse and addiction (for example, Massachusetts is in the top quartile for alcohol poisoning deaths), and ads almost always glorify drinking with sex appeal and other misleading messages (and no sort of warning of its side effects, like we have for prescription drug ads). We realized this was a bad thing for tobacco and banned those advertisements on television and many other media, but paradoxically don’t do the same with alcohol, which is more dangerous in many ways.
If we want to reduce alcohol abuse and addiction, we should be doing more to restrict alcohol advertising, treating it the way we do tobacco. Re-opening the MBTA to alcohol advertising won’t single-handedly cause addiction, but it’s a step in the wrong direction. I wouldn’t be surprised if the ~$1.3 million in ad revenue raised by the T ends up costing the state far more in substance abuse treatment, lost productivity, and worsened health.
jcohn88 says
Personally, I don’t think there should be advertising for anything on public transit. It is, after all, “public,” and it should be a zone free from commercialism. That would, of course, mean money would have to come from taxes, but there is a lot of wealth in this state–and the new wealth (as opposed to aristocratic wealth) rests on public investments like the T.
Given that alcohol is so damaging for one’s health and has so many risk factors, the double standard in society, in which it receives a far lighter regulatory touch than other such substances, is so indefensible.
SamTracy says
I’m not sure where I stand on advertising on government property as a general principle, so that’s where I’m 20% short. Things like ads and user fees lessen the burden on taxpayers, but I do sympathize with the idea that public spaces should be non-commercial. Gonna think about that a bit more.
But I couldn’t agree more about the ridiculous double standard we have for alcohol in our society. It’s actually far more dangerous than many other drugs, and destroys so many lives, it’s insane how loosely regulated it is. I’m always shocked when cities’ sports stadiums bear the logos of alcohol companies, while we simultaneously demonize tobacco companies and treat marijuana like it’s heroin. I’m glad that Boston isn’t one of those cities, and hope that we distance ourselves further from alcohol advertising, not start to embrace it like the MBTA may call for.