The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) says that 92 percent of alcohol advertising meets the industry's self-imposed threshold on limiting underage exposure to beer, wine and liquor ads and urged the industry to expand the self-regulatory standards to event sponsorships as well as TV and Internet ads.

In a 1999 report, the FTC had criticized the alcohol industry for a self-regulatory scheme that allowed companies to advertise alcohol in publications and on shows where up to half the audience was under the legal drinking age. In 2003, the agency reported that the industry had agreed to raise the standard to 70 percent. The three major industry trade groups also adopted procedures for external review of complaints about possible violation of advertising codes of conduct.

"It is evident that the 12 major (alcohol) suppliers have engaged in good faith efforts to respond to the FTC's earlier recommendations, implementing the 70 -percent placement standard for print and broadcast media and adopting systems of external review," the FTC noted in its June 2008 report, Self Regulation in the Alcohol Industry.

"The FTC has stated clearly that the spirits industry has done an excellent job in ensuring that its advertising and marketing is directed to adults," said Distilled Spirits Council President Peter H. Cressy. Jeff Becker, president of the Beer Institute, added, "Brewers appreciate the vigilance and fairness that FTC officials have demonstrated over the years in reviewing advertising practices. Our members have always cooperated and have taken FTC inquiries and guidance seriously." 

FTC commissioners voted 4-0 to approve the report, with one commissioner, Pamela Jones Harbour, abstaining. Harbour said that she agreed with some aspects of the report but said the FTC should have required the industry to increase the advertising standard to 75 percent adult audiences. "I would prefer that the commission take a tougher stance against alcohol advertising to underage audiences," she said.

Kim Crump, manager of federal relations for the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), was harsher in her assessment of the FTC report, saying that it "falls woefully short of the rigorous review of alcohol advertising practices that is needed."

"The FTC ignored problems with industry codes, including their vagueness and permissiveness," said Crump. "In particular, the FTC failed to consider that, in recent years, the beer and liquor industry voluntary codes have been significantly liberalized; for example, to permit the use of parody and humor in beer advertising to legitimize the portrayal of illegal and dangerous activities in connection with beer consumption, and to allow the advertising of liquor on television."

Crump also took issue with the FTC's praise for the industry's system for third-party review of complaints about alcohol ads, questioning the impartiality of review boards whose members are paid by the industry and the accountability of a system that includes no sanctions for violators.

The Center on Alcohol Marketing to Youth (CAMY) last month released a report stating that youth exposure to alcohol ads on TV has risen 38 percent between 2001 and 2007.

"The sad reality for kids and parents is that the alcohol industry's 30 percent standard is working on broadcast but not cable television," said CAMY executive director David Jernigan. "From 2001 to 2007, the number of alcohol advertisements seen in a year by the average television-watching 12-to-20 year-old has increased which is the opposite of its purpose."

However, the Distilled Spirits Council's Cressy said that the FTC's report supported the industry's criticism of CAMY's "questionable methodologies and conclusions."

Ironically, the FTC report was released just four days before CAMY shut its doors, its grant funding exhausted. Jernigan said the timing was "unfortunate, because the heat and the spotlight will be off" the industry. But he also expressed hope that the Department of Health and Human Services, with funds from the pending STOP Act in Congress, would take up the task of monitoring alcohol advertising to youth -- a regulatory scheme Jernigan said would be far superior to FTC's proposal to spot check ads from a handful of alcohol companies each year.

"I feel we did really well," said Jerigan of CAMY's six-year run. "This was the first time anyone on the public-health side had fully taken advantage of the [advertising] data the industry has had access to for decades ... We've done everything we can to leave a solid blueprint ... and to be replicable."