Alcohol brands that most underage drinkers consume are heavily advertised in the magazines that young people read, according to a recent study.

Researchers from the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Boston University School of Public Health found that underage drinkers are three times more likely to drink alcohol brands that advertise on television programs they watch compared to other alcohol brands, providing new and compelling evidence of a strong association between alcohol advertising and youth drinking behavior.

"We can't speak to what advertisers' intentions are," David Jernigan, co-author of the study and director of the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY) at The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said in a statement. "But we can say there is clear evidence that 18- to 20-year-olds are the most heavily exposed to these ads."

Alcohol is the number one drug among youth and responsible for 4,300 deaths per year, yet alcohol advertising in the U.S. is primarily regulated by the industry itself through a voluntary code which serves as the main vehicle for reducing youth exposure to and appeal of alcohol advertising.

For the study, researchers surveyed more than 1,000 youth ages 13-20 recruited from a national Internet panel maintained by Knowledge Networks. All reported consuming at least one drink of alcohol in the past 30 days. The researchers determined all alcohol brands the participants had consumed within the past 30 days, as well as their exposure to alcohol brand advertising on 20 television shows they had watched within the past month.

The researchers found that the relationship between consumption of a brand and advertising exposure for that brand was significant, and that the relationship was strongest at lower levels of exposure. Their results held even after controlling for other factors influencing youth drinking, such as their parents' drinking, whether the youth chose the brand themselves, the brand's average price, and the popularity of the brand among adults.

"There is a link between exposure to brand-specific advertising and youth choices about alcohol, independent of other factors," study author David Jernigan said.

At least 14 long-term studies have found that the more young people are exposed to alcohol advertising and marketing, the more likely they are to drink, or if they are already drinking, to drink more.

The findings were recently published in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.