Teens Get Retailers to Can Halloween Beer Ads

THOUSAND OAKS —  Reminiscent of the battle to remove Joe Camel from the nation’s billboards, local teens have successfully campaigned to get nearly all the stores in Newbury Park that sell beer to agree not to use Halloween-themed advertising, which they fear targets underage drinkers.

The anti-alcohol effort is part of a nationwide “Hands Off Halloween” campaign to keep brewers from using marketing displays that may appeal to youths.

Based on its success in Newbury Park, Senior Girl Scouts Troop 921 and a group called Community Action Teens want to expand the program through the entire Conejo Valley next year.

“The beer industry, since the early ‘90s, has been trying to turn Halloween into another major drinking holiday, right up there with St. Patrick’s Day and Super Bowl Sunday,” said Kathy Olsen, coordinator of Community Action Network of the Conejo Valley, an anti-drug group that oversees the teen activists. “Adults will purchase beer for their parties with or without the use of these gimmicks that are greatly attractive to children.”

Every October, stores that sell alcohol display promotional beer posters and cardboard cutouts in the shape of black cats, bats, ghosts, skeletons and pumpkins.

As a result, Olsen said, by the time American children turn 10, many have already decided which brand of beer they will drink.

The Community Action Teens, a branch of the Community Action Network, and the Girl Scouts wrote letters to 13 Newbury Park stores earlier this month, urging them not to use Halloween-theme promotional items.

Many of the teens followed up the letters with visits to each store to thank those owners who agreed to pull the ads or to request that Halloween displays be taken down. In their place, the teens posted signs making customers aware that the stores would not promote beer to children.

One retailer, Albertson’s Food and Drug Store, even agreed to display a Halloween-themed poster with examples of the offending poster images that asks, “What kind of monsters market beer to children?”

Community Action Teens member Sara Prinsky, 14, said she was motivated to join the campaign because she often sees her peers at Newbury Park High School drinking after school and on weekends.

“Alcohol and cigarettes are a real problem here among the youth,” she said.

Kellie Riganti, 14, another member, said she hopes the group’s efforts will create positive peer pressure. “If they see people our age protesting, maybe some people would stop,” she said. “They would see [drinking] is not as cool as they think.”

Olsen said the owners or managers of 12 of the 13 Newbury Park retail stores that sell beer agreed not to display the Halloween posters from the beer companies. The owner of Stagecoach Liquors, the last store contacted, could not be reached, she said.

But Stagecoach Liquors did not have any Halloween-theme ads on display when the teens visited the store, Olsen said.

Mark Ballat, manager of Copper Still Liquor, said he does not sell beer to minors so it does not make sense to display beer ads that appeal to them.

“People are taking advantage of Halloween for beer advertisements,” he said. “That’s not right.”

Community Action Network is a 2-year-old grass-roots coalition whose goal is to limit the accessibility of alcohol and drugs to Conejo Valley youths.

Last January, the organization was awarded a three-year, $170,000 “Partners in Prevention” grant from the Ventura County Behavioral Health office to design programs to help prevent alcohol abuse among youth.

Participating in the “Hands Off Halloween” campaign, which was created by the Center on Alcohol Advertising in Berkeley, cost the local group only $40 for supplies to create its awareness posters.

Olsen said that next year the teen activists will petition all Conejo Valley retail businesses that sell liquor to request they not use Halloween-theme ads.

“We are going to hit everyone next year--from Westlake to Newbury Park,” she said. “Because there are so many stores, we’ll have to start visiting them earlier.”

Olsen said she will recruit local Boy Scouts to join the effort in 1998.

A manager for one of three beer distributors operating in Ventura County, who requested anonymity, said he has no intention of ending the popular Halloween-theme advertising.

“I wouldn’t stop using them,” he said. “If someone is going in to buy a case of beer, I don’t think a [cardboard] pumpkin that says ‘Coors Light’ is going to make a difference.”

He added that distributors, who don’t advocate underage drinking, donate a lot of money to youth sports leagues and community activities.