At the full Council meeting on 19th January Stockport Council passed a motion urging the Government to introduce a 9pm TV watershed on alcohol advertising.
Councillor Colin Foster, Stockport Council’s Executive Member for Children and Family Services said: “As a local authority we are keen to do everything we can to protect the health of our children and young people. Alcohol has a very damaging effect on our communities yet our children are bombarded with alcohol marketing from a very early age. Half of all alcohol adverts on TV are screened before 9pm. This is not acceptable so that is why we are calling on the Government to introduce a 9pm watershed.”
Councillor Tom McGee, Stockport Council’s Executive Member for Health, said: “We have known for a long time that excessive alcohol consumption is very harmful to a person’s health so why expose children to adverts that encourage and glamorise drinking? In Stockport we have higher than average admissions of young people under 18 to hospital due to excessive consumption of alcohol. That is why we need action on all fronts to tackle this issue.”
The motion was put forward following a campaign roadshow “See What Sam Sees” held in October by the social enterprise Healthier Futures. The roadshow sought the views of the public across Greater Manchester on the issue.
Andrea Crossfield, from Healthier Futures, said: “The more advertising children see, the younger they start drinking and the heavier they drink. The feedback we received at our road show at Bramhall and other areas we visited indicated that the public are shocked by the amount of alcohol advertising our children are exposed to, and 86% of those we spoke to across GM support a 9pm watershed. We are delighted that the motion passed by Stockport Council received support from all political parties.”
