New York City Health Department Takes on Excessive Holiday Drinking in New Ads

First it was sugary drinks. Then the dangers of smoking. Now the city is taking on binge drinking in a series of new ads out just in time for the start of Christmas season.

Excessive drinking — which the Health Department said recently is linked to three percent of emergency-room visits in the city — accounts for about 1,500 deaths per year across the five boroughs.

“Two drinks ago, you could still get yourself home,” reads one message next to a photo of a woman with her head slumped sitting on subway steps.

The ads will run in English and Spanish in subways and billboards over the next month.
Three weeks ago, Mayor Bloomberg's latest health campaign, cutting salt intake, targeted soup as one of the big sodium offenders to be taken down with new city ads.

Those ads, which will be plastered on subways for the next two months, feature a half-opened can of soup with a geyser of salt spewing from the top and forming a heap around the can.

Trying to put fear into the hearts of salt-aholics, the ads will warn that excessive sodium "can lead to heart attack and stroke" and list average amounts of salt in various foods, such as salad dressing and frozen pizza.