Alcohol Companies Continue to Target Young and Inappropriate Consumers
Take a look at the product in the picture- what does that appear to be? Candy? Pez? Vitamins?
Those pouches are called "ShotPaks" and ShotPaks contain the number one killer of teens in America - alcohol. What good can possibly come of this product being marketed to America's youths?
At Sober Living by the Sea, we give men and women the strength to walk past the liquor store and avoid tempting products like this and we have done so for over twenty three years. Still we know that it is products like ShotPaks (and alcoholic energy drinks) which indicate that we live in a society that tolerates drinking as a perceived fun and youthful activity while not acknowledging the deadly side effects.
These ShotPaks are packaged and priced (from 99 cents) to be consumed by younger people and while they are "on the go" or even in inappropriate environments (ie. while driving or in public, at school, or another location that alcohol consumption is prohibited).
ShotPak's parent company claims that the alcohol pouches are supposedly marketed “for a social setting where people don’t want to cart glass around," and also claims that the target audience is adults aged 25-40. The company has already had to remove imagery on its website about ShotPaks that violated standards of advertising maintained by the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States.
At Sober Living by the Sea our programs of treatment and recovery from alcoholism, drug addiction, and eating disorders have always centered on the treatment philosophy that the world will always be drinking around us and that we have to learn to be strong and support each other in our recovery program to ignore what the rest of society deems acceptable or is doing. However, certain trends like the Alcohol Energy Drinks and the ShotPaks are clearly going to contribute to irresponsible drinking and behaviors that will have fatal results. Since:
a) ShotPaks and Alcoholic Energy Drinks are marketed to younger people
b) Drinking by underage people is on the rise
and
c) Alcohol is the number one killer of teens in America
it is not hard to argue that these product will have a negative result in society and should be taken off the shelves permanently.
