The Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY), an industry watchdog, offered rare praise for alcohol companies in reporting that youth exposure to alcohol ads in magazine fell 49 percent between 2001 and 2005.

CAMY reported that most alcoholic-beverage firms have limited their advertising to publications with underage readerships of 30 percent or less. Under 1 percent of industry ad expenses went to publications with youth readership in excess of this voluntary industry standard in 2005, down from 11 percent in 2002.

The voluntary standards were adopted by the alcohol and distilled-liquor industries in 2003. However, CAMY would like to see the industry standard lowered to 15 percent youth readership, noting that 44 percent of alcohol ads and half of spending goes to publications with youth readership greater than 15 percent.

"The alcohol industry has done a good job of following its voluntary standard when it comes to advertising in magazines, but the standard itself is not strong enough to adequately protect youth from needless exposure to this advertising," said CAMY director David Jernigan.