MBTA General Manager Richard Davey says he is “strongly looking at” a future systemwide ban on alcohol advertising.
Davey made the comment last week at newly-renovated Ashmont Station in Dorchester, the latest stop on his “Join the GM” tour in which he spends time at T stations answering questions and getting feedback from passengers.
Davey talked about a possible ban on alcohol ads after a brief meeting at the Red Line station with a group of young members of Supporting an Alcohol Ad Free Environment in MA (SAFE MA). Five young people presented Davey with nearly 300 postcards signed by Massachusetts residents who support the campaign. Coalition members are especially concerned about the advertising strategy of plastering entire subway entire cars with posters, some featuring glamorous young people consuming alcohol.
“When we go to school, we see these ads…targeting young kids to drink,” said Giovanny Colon, 16, a member of the group’s Allston-Brighton chapter. A 2009 report by the Boston University School of Public Health found that Boston youths aged 11 to 18 are continuously exposed to alcohol ads on MBTA subway cars.
Massachusetts is one of ten states with the highest rate of regular alcohol use by minors. African-American and Latino students are disproportionately exposed to messages about drinking, says Yasmari Estrada, 15, of Allston-Brighton. “The MBTA is our school bus,” she said. White kids riding yellow school buses don’t have to see these types of ads, Estrada added.
The statewide coalition of youth and substance abuse prevention groups and public health officials wants the T to completely ban alcohol ads when the authority’s advertising contract expires in 2015. In the interim, the coalition wants the T to remove all alcohol ads on subway and bus lines that are heavily traveled by young people. The group is targeting the subway’s Red and Orange lines as well as the No. 1 bus, which travels from Harvard Square in Cambridge to Dudley Square in Roxbury.
The MBTA has not yet acted on the request. The group has also requested a place at the table when the authority begins to look at a new advertising contract in two years.
The MBTA receives more than $1.7 million in revenues from alcohol advertising, out of total annual advertising revenue of $11.7 million. But activists say the T would have no trouble filling any gap created by a ban on alcohol ads. “This is extremely valuable advertising space and they can get somebody else to fill it,” said Kay Walsh, the project coordinator of South Boston CAN Reduce Underage Drinking and a member of the anti-alcohol ad coalition.
Davey said he has a dual role as fiscal steward of the regional transit system and as a public official with obligations to the broader public interest. “At the end of the day, we are a state agency, so revenue is important, but it’s not the almighty,” he said. “So we have to think about our place as an institution that 1.3 million people use every day.”
A ban on alcohol ads would not be the first time the MBTA has bowed to public pressure on social issues involving minors. In 2006, the authority banned ads for the most violent video games.
SAFE MA plans additional meetings with Davey in July to discuss the issue. The group’s ultimate goal is the passage of a bill, currently pending in the Legislature, which would prohibit alcohol advertising on all state property.
When it comes to the push to ban alcohol ads, the T is more of a laggard than a leader. Boston and New York are the only two major cities that have not banned alcohol advertising on public transportation, according to the Marin Institute, an alcohol industry watchdog group.
