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While it is known that marketing agencies pitch products to what's known as a "target audience" to try to brand their products and establish a principle audience.

Though this is common practice for all marketing/advertising companies and not a single demographic has been left untouched, A new study makes an alarming discovery about alcohol distributors and their prevalence for targeting African-American youths.

(Do a google search on "Alcohol" or "Binge Drinking" and play where's black Waldo: alcohol adervtising fail)

"The report's central finding-that African-American youth are being over-exposed to alcohol advertising-is a result of two key phenomena," summarizes author David Jernigan, PhD, the director of CAMY. "First, brands are specifically targeting African-American audiences and, secondly, African-American media habits make them more vulnerable to alcohol advertising in general because of higher levels of media consumption. As a result, there should be a commitment from alcohol marketers to cut exposure to this high-risk population." 

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health reveals that in  African-American exposure to the media as follows: 

1. In magazines African-American Youths saw 32 percent more alcohol advertising than all youth in national magazines. Added to that, magazines with high African-American readership, such as Ebony, and Jet, saw at least twice as much alcohol exposure than other publications: Jet (440 percent more), Essence (435 percent more), Ebony (426 percent more), Black Enterprise (421 percent more), and Vibe (328 percent more ). Five brands of alcohol overexposed African-American youth compared to all youth and to African-American adults: Seagram's Twisted Gin, Seagram's Extra Dry Gin, Jacques Cardin Cognac, 1800 Silver Tequila, and Hennessy Cognacs.

2. In television: Afam youths were exposed to 17 percent more advertising per capita than all youth in 2009, including 20 percent more exposure to distilled spirits advertising. Several networks generated at least twice as much demographic specific exposure to alcohol advertising than all other youths combined: TV One (453 percent more), BET (344 percent more), SoapNet (299 percent more), CNN (130 percent more) and TNT (122 percent more).

3. In radio, the group heard 32 percent more radio advertising for distilled spirits in 2009. In these markets, four station formats delivered more alcohol advertising exposure to African-American youths than to African-American adults: Contemporary Hit/Rhythmic (104 percent more), Contemporary Hit/Pop (14 percent more), Urban (13 percent more) and Hot Adult Contemporary (43 percent more).

Researchers say that these statistics "have made clear that immediate action is needed to protect the health and well-being of young African Americans."  It is not, researchers stress any fault of those targeted that ,one in three African-American high school students in the U.S. are current drinkers, and about 40 percent of those who drink report binge drinking but the media who should be shame-faced about these gross inequalities in advertising and self-reflect on why they feel the need to target populations that are already struggling to keep up socioeconomically with their white and asian peers.