Drunk Driving Ads From Industry Weaken Safety Efforts, New Study Finds

Forbes
By Tanya Mohn, Contributor.
April 23, 2025

Alcohol industry sponsored advertisements are designed to combat drunk driving, but they lessen the impact of safety initiatives. Mass media campaigns appear to be socially responsible, but are largely ineffective because they don’t prioritize public health – they serve as marketing tools “shaping favorable perceptions of alcohol while doing little to reduce the harms.”

Those are the main findings of a new analysis released earlier this month by Vital Strategies, a nonprofit global public health organization.

“The alcohol industry prioritizes profits; public health prioritizes people,” Sandra Mullin, senior vice president of policy advocacy and communication for Vital Strategies, said in a statement. “To truly protect lives on our roads, governments must exclude the alcohol industry from shaping safety campaigns. Instead, they should invest in proven, public health-led communication strategies that increase awareness, shift social norms and encourage safer behaviors. A well-executed, independent drink-driving campaign can reduce crashes by 13% and save lives.”

The study “How the Alcohol Industry Steers Governments Away From Effective Strategies to Curb Drink Driving: Insights from Advertising Research,” noted that drunk driving is a major risk factor for road traffic crashes, contributing to 27% of the 20 to 50 million crash injuries every year.

For the analysis, researchers examined 32 industry-supported drunk driving video ads from 14 countries aired between 2006 and 2022.

Some key findings from the study:

• Alcohol consumption was glamorized in 61% of ads, and associated with situations like celebrations, social inclusion and displays of social or financial status.
• Celebrities, including actors, musicians, race car drivers and professional athletes, appeared in nearly half (49%) of the advertisements.
• Most (56%) of ads did not demonstrate the consequences of drunk driving.
• None of the ads used tones that would evoke negative emotions or clearly convey the consequences of drunk driving.

The report offered a series of recommendations that prioritize public safety, including several that stressed the importance of local and national governments and NGOs to avoid partnerships with the alcohol industry so that public health efforts remain independent and not reliant on alcohol industry contributions.

“These partnerships often come at a cost,” the study said, “offering short-term funding while ultimately undermining evidence-based interventions.”

When created and executed effectively and in conjunction with other strategies, like enhanced enforcement, public health drunk driving campaigns can significantly reduce alcohol-related crashes, injuries and deaths.

A series of guidelines were developed by the World Health Organization and the Bloomberg Philanthropies Initiative for Global Road Safety based on message testing studies conducted in 20 countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia.

“Industry-backed drink-driving ads?create an illusion of commitment to road safety while failing to meet effective communication standards,” Irina Morozova, director of the road safety communication program at Vital Strategies, said in a statement. “Our analysis shows that these industry-led campaigns do more to promote and normalize alcohol use than to prevent harm. Public health must come before corporate image-we need strategies that genuinely protect lives, not those designed to serve the industry’s interests.”