The Prevention of Alcohol Problems

Abstract

Although concern over the prevention of alcohol problems has a long history, evaluative research regarding such effects is of more recent vintage. In effect, the post-prohibition era shifted the focus of social concern from alcohol per se to the individual with alcohol problems, individuals said to be predisposed and afflicted with the disease of alcoholism. Consequently, the major emphasis in the alcohol field became treatment. The formation and subsequent reports of the Cooperative Commission on the Study of Alcoholism (Plaut, 1967; Wilkinson, 1970) emerged later as a major prevention landmark. The members of this commission, who represented various professions and disciplines, examined the many social and developmental influences on alcohol problems from a broad perspective. The commission’s observation and resultant recommendations essentially constituted a programmatic social plan for reducing the country’s drinking problems. It is no small tribute that many of their specific proposals for prevention found their way into the early activities of the then newly formed National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). The overriding them of a need for change in alcohol-related attitudes and social norms, with a particular emphasis on the preventive value of education, characterizes the literature of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Changes in distribution and licensing were seen as important ways of modifying key social attitudes.