I would suggest a tax on all such advertisements and disallowing them as business expenses. It should be at least a tax of 100% of the cost of creating and running the ad, but some multiple if required so as to generate sufficient revenue to cover the cost of the consequences of the use of the product. These are probably the greatest for alcohol, as lives are lost and/or mangled as a routine, collateral consequence of excessive use of alcohol. Another benefit is that it might help sober up Joe Sixpack. Unanesthesized, he or some of his cohort might find more to contemplate and correct and less to celebrate about their condition.
Perhaps this is farfetched, but it is a dream of mine, and it is certainly more benign than raising revenue by legalizing lotteries and gambling. If sanity be culturally normative, then by the norms of this culture I claim insanity.
Our whole W*estern society is devoted, in one form or another, to the alteration of the mind by the narrowness of behaviour caused by the intake or provocation of biochemicals. There is only one way, in the long run, to counteract becoming predictable, and that is to consistently seek the unpredictable - even, paradoxically, biochemically.
It is very hard to run any society as a leader, without using or misusing some of this biochemical know-how. Joe Five-Brains might be a better icon of the future than Joe Six-Pack. You can't be me, I'm taken
Perhaps this is farfetched
Temperance campaigns are certainly odd expressions of normative expectations (not continent behavior), and resulting legislation by state in the US exercises doctrinal legal realism (don't stop reading at wiki) to the limit of public safety.
Personal point of reference: Some twenty-years ago a few of my clients were a number of beer, distillery, or wine importers. Advertising media was statutorily limited to print and event (promo) media. I've been out of the loop for ten years or so (I am not in the life and not regular teevee audience). Have you notice as have I over the last five years or so increasing frequency of broadcast commercials (00:30) of beer, spirits, and liqueurs, sanctioned by a "mice type" disclaimer to "drink responsibly"? Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
