Marin County News

Marin Institute Forges Healthy Partnership at
County Fair

The Marin Institute, the Youth Leadership Institute, and the Marin County Department of Health and Human Services organized a successful community outreach effort at the 2003 Marin County Fair. Together, the three organizations created a booth highlighting the alcohol industry's predatory youth marketing practices, part of the Healthy Marin Partnership's "Prevention Pavilion" at the fair. The Marin Institute joined more than 30 community organizations in the effort to provide fairgoers with interactive and fun information on healthy choices early in life. Highlights included:

• Educating thousands of fairgoers on alcohol industry marketing and promotion practices through discussion, displays and an interactive "Alcohol Challenge"-where youth try and separate alcoholic beverage containers from non-alcoholic containers;
• Distributing 8,000 bottles of free water as a healthy alternative to soda and alcohol;
• Recruiting dozens of youth, parents and other Marin residents to join in local alcohol policy advocacy efforts.

Visitors to the fair also showed support for policies that would make the popular annual event free of alcohol sponsorship and advertising. This year's fair featured beer sales and signs from lead sponsor Miller Brewing Company, as well as Budweiser and Coors. According to an Alcohol Marketing Survey administered at the fair, most fairgoers support an alcohol-free event (57 percent) and would like to see alcohol promotions and advertisements eliminated (51 percent).