Young adolescents who own t-shirts, hats and other merchandise with an alcohol brand name on it are more likely to begin drinking than kids who do not own these items, according to a study by Dartmouth Medical School researchers published in the April issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
"This study is a first look at the association between alcohol-branded merchandise and initiation of alcohol use in teens," said Dr. Auden McClure, clinical instructor in pediatrics at Dartmouth Medical School and lead author of the study.
"Our research found that students who owned an alcohol-branded item were significantly more likely to have initiated alcohol use than students who did not own one," she said.
From that group, students who said they had not used alcohol were followed up 1 to 2 years later with a phone interview that asked about their drinking, that of their peers, and whether they owned alcohol-branded merchandise (such as a t-shirt or a hat with an alcohol name on it).
The study concluded that even after controlling for other risk factors for drinking, students who owned alcohol-branded merchandise were 1.5 times more likely to initiate drinking than students who did not.
McClure notes that the results of this study are limited by the fact that the adolescents were from one region of the country, that several other risk factors such as parent drinking and access to alcohol were not examined, and that, because ownership of alcohol branded merchandise was not determined prior to the assessment of alcohol use, causality could not be established.
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