Drug and alcohol addiction are becoming increasingly prevalent in the United States. The line of celebrities entering and leaving rehab (often several times) seems endless. Additionally, young people are exposed to more than 1,000 beer and wine commercials on television each year. They also see several thousand incidents where drinking is fictional and glamorized. As daily stressors increase in people's lives, combined with the easy availability of alcohol offering a quick fix, more and more people are turning to the bottle to blot out their problems. Addiction statistics are staggering and a somber wake up call that something needs to change.

In context, one in five people between the age of 12 and 20 is a binge drinker. In fact, about one in 30 alcoholics is still under the age of 13. Americans spend over $90 billion purchasing alcohol annually. Fifty percent of driving road fatalities involve alcohol consumption. In other words, alcohol kills someone on the road in the United States every 30 minutes. Perhaps now you agree that the heavy use of alcohol warrants further investigation.

The liquor industry spends nearly $2 billion per year advertising to people that they need to drink alcohol. People under drinking age are on average exposed to about three television commercials per day encouraging them to drink alcohol. These ads typically involve showing cool people having a great time, with alcohol as a necessary component of the experience. You would expect this of any company trying to make a profit, but what about truth in advertising? These scenes are truly not representative of the average alcohol experience.

The sales results for these advertising campaigns are obvious. People below the legal drinking age spend an estimated $5.5 billion annually on alcoholic beverages. For context, that is more money than this same group spends on all other beverages combined. Surveys on school children indicate that 56% of them believe that they have been encouraged to drink by what they see in advertisements. How can we continue to allow advertising of this drug to be displayed in the arena where our children spend the bulk of their time?

The results of alcohol addiction go beyond just family struggles, health problems and road dangers. In surveys, about 6.6% of employees admit to being heavy drinkers, a percentage that doesn't include those afraid to answer truthfully and those in denial. Heavy drinkers are here defined as either people who consume five drinks in a day or drink at least five days per month. Comparatively, 12.2% of admitted heavy drinkers are job-seeking unemployed adults between 26 and 34 years old. The economy is in no small part effected by alcohol addiction.

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