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Recent research on the effects of alcohol policy changes

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Abstract

As the agenda of alcohol problems prevention has broadened, new traditions of research have emerged: of experimental studies at the community or the societal level, of “natural experiment” studies of the effects of sudden changes such as strikes or new legislation, and of sophisticated time-series analyses of the effects of sudden and of long-term changes. While it has been shown that control measures can influence alcohol problems rates, substantial change seems to require changes in the political status quo, often also involving popular movements. Except for taxes, raising the drinking age and drinking-driving countermeasures, the political will to restrict availability has been lacking in market-oriented industrial societies in the modern era, so that the modern experience of the effects of other control measures is based on centrally-planned or non-industrial economies.

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  1. Robin Room
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Additional information

Preparation of this paper was supported by a National Alcohol Research Center grant (AA-05595) from the U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism to the Alcohol Research Group, Medical Research Institute of San Francisco, 2000 Hearst Avenue, Berkeley CA 94709. Revised from papers presented at a meeting on “Alcohol Policies: Perspectives from the USSR and Some Other Countries,” October 31-November 4, 1988, Baku, USSR, and at a NIMHANS-ADAMHA Symposium on Alcohol and Drug Abuse, Bangalore, India, November 18–21, 1986.

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Room, R. Recent research on the effects of alcohol policy changes. J Primary Prevent 11, 83–94 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01324862

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