IF YOU'RE thinking about how responsible an attitude we have to alcohol, looking at how we find out about it is a good starting point. Alcohol advertising, though controlled by tough rules, is pretty much ubiquitous.

It's also often memorable. There was Guinness's funky, male dancer flailing around an empty room to a catchy tune - that one gained cult status. There were the Tennent's Lager masochisT and sadisT. And then there was the one with George Clooney being refused entry to an uber-cool soiree for failing to bring along a bottle of Martini.

The alcohol industry has undeniably been responsible for hours of funny, clever and entertaining television and cinema advertising over the years. But, as the Dutch film maker in the Grolsch adverts might say: shtop! shtop! - are our youngsters ready for these adverts?

In 2001, some GBP181.3m was spent on alcohol advertising. For promotion and marketing, the budget was around three times higher - an estimated GBP600 to GBP800m. Does all this exposure to the alcoholic products on offer, as the industry argues, simply promote a particular brand without increasing consumption? Or does it fuel underagers' desire to drink and to do so with gleeful abandon?

The largest UK study into the effect of advertising on underage drinking, currently being carried out at Stirling University, hopes to come up with some answers.

Over the coming months, 1800 13-year-olds will be recruited and questioned about their drinking habits. Then their exposure to advertising will be measured; they will be grilled about the alcohol advertising they remember and the extent to which they recognise adverts shown to them by the researchers.

The questioning will not cover just broadcast and print media. Researchers will also study the extent to which the teenagers are aware of sponsorships, special promotions and advertising on the internet. Two years later, the teenagers will be recalled by researchers and again questioned on their drinking habits and the impact of advertising on them.

The study is expected to take three years to complete and cost a total of GBP340,000. It has been funded by the National Prevention Research Initiative (NPRI), a disease prevention coalition that brings together the public and the charity sector, including the Scottish Executive Health Department, the British Heart Foundation and Cancer Research UK.

Gerard Hastings is director of the Institute of Social Marketing at Stirling University, where the research is taking place.

He says: "Generally speaking, the argument deployed by the alcohol industry is that advertising might have an effect on brands but not on overall consumption. It is up to the research to interrogate that assumption. I would anticipate there would be an effect but, as a researcher, I'm standing on the sidelines and seeing where the research will take us."

American research has already suggested a link between advertising and binge drinking. In a study published in 2003, researchers compared the drinking habits of American underagers across the country, exposed to differing levels of alcohol advertising in their local areas. Their results showed, they argued, that a compete ban on alcohol advertising could reduce monthly drinking by adolescents about 24-per cent and binge drinking - anything more than five drinks consumed in one sitting - by about 42-per cent.

In Britain watchdogs recently banned two TV adverts forWKD and Smirnoff Ice because they were deemed too juvenile. And, in America, child protection and health advocates have called on Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Kevin Spacey and Vince Vaughn to reconsider their participation in Bud. tv, an online video entertainment website aimed at young people who use video sites such as YouTube and social networking sites such as MySpace.

"These actors should rethink whether they want their appeal to young people to be exploited by Anheuser-Busch, " says George Hacker, director of the US-based alcohol policies project at the Centre for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI).

Alcohol advertising in the UK is currently controlled by a combination of legislation and self-regulation. Ads can't incorporate images of people who are, or look as if they are, under 25, for instance.

They can't imply that alcohol makes you more popular, successful or attractive. Or that people who drink alcohol are brave, tough or daring.

In 2004 Ofcom, the media regulator, announced that any alcohol advert on TV deemed to appeal strongly to under-18s would be banned.

Sponsorship and promotion have not escaped unscathed. A matter of months ago it was announced that alcohol advertising is to be removed from football and rugby shirts sold to children. And if the Scottish Executive has its way, promotional activity for alcoholic drinks will be confined to just one area in supermarkets, so special offers cannot be flagged up in other parts of the store.

But drinks producers insist their marketing is not aimed at young people anyway. Diageo, the world's biggest producer of alcoholic drinks, responsible for brands from Smirnoff to Dom Perignon, argue that they market only to those aged 18 and over. "We do not just market responsibly but we also market the concept of responsible drinking, " says Kate Blakeley, head of social responsibility for the company.

Earlier this year, the Scottish Executive announced that it would be working with producers such as Diageo and InBev, which owns Tennent's, to promote responsible alcohol consumption. Health minister Andy Kerr is optimistic this will allow the executive to tap into massive advertising budgets that dwarf their own. Launching the partnership, Health Minister Andy Kerr said: "I would rather be in a room with these powerful people. Their advertising budget is bigger than mine. Their influence on young people is greater than mine. I think by bringing them to the table . . . the overall impact for society may be better." He said the partnership would see manufacturers promoting responsible alcohol consumption, through such measures as labels that highlight the risks of excessive drinking.

Wider social factors have to be taken into account, Hastings says: "Things such as alcohol use, tobacco use and drug use are largely determined by the social norms of the group in which you live. We need to educate people and inform them of the dangers. But we also need to make the environment in which they live as supportive of healthier behaviour as possible.

"There's a phrase obesity researchers use. They say we live in an obesogenic environment; one which encourages people to get fat. The more available alcohol is - the cheaper it is, the more outlets there are - the more problems you will have."