Police, hotels back binge drink ads

The SA Government has launched an advertising campaign against binge drinking, mainly aimed at men between 18 and 39.

The television commercials show a young man being turned away from a nightclub - and a father vomiting in front of his young child.

SA Substance Abuse Minister Gail Gago says the $600,000 campaign will be run around the time of the Adelaide Cup, Christmas and schoolies' week.

"I think it's really important that we approach adverse impacts of drinking, particularly binge drinking, from a wide range of perspectives," she said.

"The alcopop tax is just one. We can see that this advertising campaign is another.

"It's targeted at a high-risk binge drinking group, young men."

General manager of the Australian Hotels Association Ian Horne is backing the campaign.

"You would think that binge drinking and problems with alcohol was only invented since January and clearly that's not the case but, as the Minister said ... consumption per head of population is declining and it's the lowest it has been for a number of decades," he said.

"What is a problem is how some categories of people are drinking and I think that's the target."

Police Chief Superintendent Tom Osborne has also backed the campaign but warns the problems caused by binge drinking go beyond its immediate ill-effects or being refused service.

"Certainly harm on the streets - harm in terms of road safety and it harms the families so it's certainly a real problem and it's something that we need to be conscious of," he said.

"You ask people to exercise some commonsense themselves and the ads only demonstrate just a couple of the aspects of binge drinking."

ABC News