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National Addiction and Interventions |
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Research opportunities to investigate nation wide drug interventions and aspects of environmental controls on the availability of alcoholic beverages include identifying the effect of retail price on heavy, high-risk drinking; investigating the role of location, density, and hours of sale of alcohol outlets; and determining the effect or effects of pricing strategies.
The standards of a community, both explicit and implicit, play a large role in shaping behavior and determining alcohol availability and consumption. The media play their parts in significantly affecting public perceptions of norms of alcohol use. Alcohol-related information is conveyed primarily through three modes: (1) public information campaigns, (2) commercial advertising by the alcohol industry, and (3) fictional television and movie programming that depicts drinking. The effective use of counteractive media can be an important component of a prevention effort, especially for young people who are major consumers of media offerings.
Other aspects of the so-called drinking environment can also be brought into play to prevent adverse consequences of alcohol use. For example, both the law and social pressure can be used to reduce the number of drivers who drink. Studies are needed to assess the effect of changes in speed limits
on the number of drunk-driving accidents and to explain the decline in fatal crashes in the early 1980s. Another promising legal strategy that needs evaluation involves the drinking context. Several states or jurisdictions have passed server liability statutes, making those who serve alcoholic beverages liable for the actions of their patrons. This liability has led to server training in assessing patron consumption, interventions by servers, and planned changes in the drinking settings of establishments that serve alcoholic beverages.
The workplace as a drinking setting offers another promising avenue of prevention research-promising in terms of both the knowledge to be gained and the reduction of costs incurred when employees have alcohol problems. More studies of the social organization of the workplace are needed to explain differential rates of drinking problems. In considering the workplace as a setting for alcohol consumption, individual heavy drinking may be viewed as a cultural effect, a group response to work conditions, or a consequence of individual proclivities resulting in one or many national addiction hotline numbers. Research should be directed toward discovering the extent to which occupational drinking groups evolve and the determinants of affiliation with such groups. Real Estate |
