Sute is sure.

I kant tipe...lol!!!

What were they thinking when the put books about making cocktails in the middle of the coloring books? Good for you for noticing and saying something about it! I think stuff like that matters.

we have a department store that sponsors DARE and does college scholarships for kids, and when I walked into the store about 3 or 4 years ago - the whole young people's (men) section was nothing but T shirts on drinking ads and "funny" drunk shirts. Literally about 30 feet on the whole left hand side of the entrance to the store. I wrote to the company. I know they can sell them, they can do anything they want...but I thought it was "anti-message" to their family values.
I haven't seen a display like that since, so others must have felt the same way.

I think we have to remember that the world is not going to change because a lot of us got sick on our own poor choices. Granted, these books on cocktails do not belong with children s books or comics, but it was a $ store where they have people working for minimum wage and tend to just throw all that imported stuff out and let the people sort it out for themselves.
Also remember that most social and political stances on moral platitudes like 'family values' and 'just say no' are just catchy slogans to embellish an agenda's eminence front. The taxes that booze and butts brings in is enough to fund the state governments alone. Do you think they really want people to stop drinking and smoking?
When the plague hit in the Dark Ages, there were people dropping everywhere. Still, life went on. I guess they started learning the values of hygiene or something, but they managed to survive.
I know we as a group of injured people become reactionary against all things alcohol related (I know in my 1st month or 2 of sobriety I was like some sort of monk!), but the truth is that most of the world at large can, and will imbibe without going off the deep end. Call it my character flaw that I cannot do the same, but that is the way of the world, and I have to live in it.

even with out my own choice to give up drinking, putting drinking t shirts in the teen section is stupid. I find it more disturbing than cocktails in the coloring book section-
and even if I am wrong, and can't change a thing, it is contra indicated for young people and goes against their "education" by us more wordly and experienced folk.
Before answering again, I thought, do I sound like a newbie- over sensitive and ready for a fight? but no...I have been sober long enough and I do really think that the world does not have to revolve around the comfort of the lowest common denominator.

I understand your being irritated. It is a sad fact that the world is revolving around that denominator you mentioned, and will continue to do so as long as there is $$$$ in it. This stuff permeates our whole life. Even on this site I was getting pop ups to go and enjoy a Heineken at the bottom of the page. Now imagine that; I am on a website that deals with recovery from alcohol abuse, and there are pop ups at the bottom telling me to "enjoy a Heineken" or some such crap.
As far as anything making any sense these days, throw it out the window if someone can make $$$$ off of it, regardless of what turpitude it serves directly, or indirectly.

Good for you!
That said, no amount of advertising or lack thereof, made me alcoholic. I agree with what someone else said. We have to change ourselves, not the outside world with all it's pressures and imperfections.

It was probably a mistake on their part and will be taken care of. No need to get outraged over it. Its annoying, but not worth anger.

Is there any evidence whatsoever that the view of alcohol kids get in early childhood has any impact on their later consumption?

I ask this for two reasons. I'm just old enough to have lived through some of the fallout from Prohibition, and that was a non-stop 30 year keg party. Puritanism always boomerangs; count on it.

The other reason is that within my own extended family, growing up in a wet or a dry home has made no difference in the rate of alcoholism in my generation. We're all tied at 50%.

To Nemo's point - I don't know of 'evidence' or outside influences, but I do think that family attitudes toward drinking, as well as practices observed definatley influence a child's attitude toward drinking. Does that amplify the genetic predisposition in alcoholic families? I'm not sure, but it may.

I grew up in a family where both parents drank nightly - one to excess, the other not as much...and I just thought that's what grown ups did. It was my normal, so my nightly glasses of wine didn't put up a red flag in my mind until glasses becames bottles. Interesting question...

bootoo,

I don't know exactly when the idea took hold in our culture that the values we absorb from our parents and other adults in early childhood are the ones that have the longest & strongest influence on us later on. And this seems to be especially untrue where alcohol is concerned, because we who grew up in homes where there was heavy drinking have some pretty horrific memories associated with it. In my case, I'd have to say that peer pressure and example in my late teens, plus the effect of the booze itself, were much stronger than any parental or institutional tsk tsk.

Besides, all the adults in my parents' world drank, and by that I mean the lawyers, the judges, teachers, doctors and the clergy. It was as much a part of life as milk and potatoes.

Nowadays,of course,we know much more about it than people did in the 1940's, but I can't see where all this knowledge has changed anything except the DUI laws.

Nemo -- there might be a correlation to the exposure kids get to alcohol and whether they become alcoholics, there might not. Either way, I don't think it is appropriate to have books about mixing drinks in with the coloring books. But then, I am just an over zealous parent -- I think cigarettes should not be displayed with candy and it bothers me when the guns are next to the toys at the local big box store.

ExJG,

In the world I was born into, the world of WW-II and shortly thereafter, Winston Churchill was obese and drank like a fish, while Adolph Hitler was a trim teetotaler and a vegetarian.

See where I'm coming from?

Wow!!!

Thanks for all the replies! Very interesting discussion...

Nemo, that'a a red herring argument.

So what?