Alcohol in America Taking Action to Prevent Abuse (1985) / Chapter Skim
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2. Why Prevention?
2. Why Prevention?
Pages 20-31
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From page 20... ...
; Why Prevention ? AN EXAMINA TION OF CURRENT A TTITUDES and policies toward drinking reveals an intriguing gap in America's approach to alcohol-related problems.
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From page 21... ...
But the much greater number of more moderate drinkers can also suffer from the problems caused by drinking—the accidents, the illnesses, the marital discord. These are the people for whom certain kinds of prevention programs can be uniquely effective.
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The population they studied cannot be taken to represent the entire United States, but it is typical of the young, employed male population. Polich ancT Orvis divided the 3,078 people they surveyed into different categories of drinkers according to their overall average daily consumption of alcohol.
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Even if America's 15 million heaviest drinkers were to stop drinking tomorrow, a substantial fraction of the country's alcohol problems would ALCOHOL-RELATED PROBLEMS WITH GLEAM BELL~GE;~i~E~ spotty= JOs Talon CONTRIBUTION OF DRINKERS TO REPORTED PROBLEMS FIGURE 2.1 National surveys reveal that the majority of certain alcohol-related problems affect moderate drinkers—those having up to two drinks per day. Heavier drinkers are more likely to suffer some sort of alcohol problem than are moderate drinkers, but there are so many more moderate drinkers that their contribution to the total problem adds up.
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From page 24... ...
They are people who do not always drink excessively; they may just drink inappropriately, recklessly, or unluckily. As Mark Moore of Harvard University puts it, "The problem of ill-timed drunkenness, badly fit into the environment, generates a substantial portion of the medical problems, the violence and crime problems, the employment problems, and even the marital problems that involve alcohol.
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From page 25... ...
Minimum drinking ages, public drunkenness, and restrictions on sales to intoxicated customers are other areas in which the law plays a role. In all of these cases, however, legal action is only one of a broad range of preventive actions that can help reduce the problem.
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This perspective on alcohol-related problems requires that people resist the temptation to think in terms of opposed pairs: prohibition versus unlimited access, treatment versus prevenlion, education versus law enforcement. Says Moore, "l have a general kind of view that all of these things turn out to be more complementary than we are inclinecl to think, that public and private work together, that punitive and treatment approaches work together, that taxation and education work together, that all of the things that we imagine as being starkly opposite, as representing alternative routes, gain power when we put them together."
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But it is a stance that the government has been encouraged to take. Preventive measures may also augment personal freedoms by avoiding some of the moralistic judgments involved in other approaches to alcohol problems.
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Barriers to Prevention Besicles the general objections to prevention mentioned above, there are certain more pragmatic problems that often arise when considering prevention policies. As Margaret Hastings of the Illinois Commission on Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities says, "Prevention is a public health ideal that everyone favors- in the abstract.
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From page 29... ...
These pressure groups often have far more influence on policy than their actual numbers of supporters would suggest." Despite these practical obstacles to prevention, preventive measures have made consiclerable political headway in recent years, in large part because of the tremendous outpouring of support and action now focused on them. As William Mayer, former head of the Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration, says, "The extent and quality of attention now being directed toward alcohol-related problems is without prec
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From page 30... ...
Elected officials, treatment providers, business leaclers, bureaucrats, volunteer groups, educators, churches, and many other individuals can act to implement the general idea of prevention, just as they have acted in the past to deal with aTcoholism. Moreover, widespread public sentiment in the United States in favor of moderate drinking ensures a supportive climate for such efforts.
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From page 31... ...
"This requires an unusual willingness to set priorities, share responsibilities, and believe in causes beyond a single individual, agency, or organizational turf," says Hastings. Organizations and individuals may even cooperate to the extent of forming coalitions that can back prevention initiatives in local, state, and federal governments.
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