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Citation

Nicholls J & Kneale J (2015) Alcohol problems and policies: Historical and contemporary perspectives: Papers from under control: Alcohol and drug regulation, past and present. Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy, 22 (2), pp. 93-95. https://doi.org/10.3109/09687637.2015.1024201

Abstract
First paragraph: It is common in contemporary debates on alcohol policy to observe that alcohol is “no ordinary commodity”. It is not ordinary for obvious reasons: the fact that it is a powerful intoxicant with the capacity to create dependency (however that is understood) being the most salient. But what does the extraordinary nature of alcohol mean from a historical perspective, and what can history tell us that might inform the development of alcohol policy today? These are questions that were explored as part of an international conference held in London in the summer of 2013. Under Control: Alcohol and Drug Regulation, Past and Present brought together researchers from across the world to discuss historical perspectives on both alcohol and drug policy.1 The conference drew attention to the many points at which alcohol and drug policy converge and overlap. Nevertheless, while the prohibition of alcohol in some western countries in the early twentieth century was largely repealed, the contemporaneous prohibition of other intoxicants became a seemingly intractable feature of national and global policy. Despite prohibition being an idea that was originally developed by Victorian temperance activists, alcohol was, in a sense, the “drug that got away” from the wave of early twentieth century prohibitionism. Therefore, its regulation raises a plethora of questions unique to a drug that remains inside the bounds of social and political legitimacy. A number of those questions are addressed in the papers collected here.

Keywords
Health(social science); Medicine (miscellaneous)

Journal
Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy: Volume 22, Issue 2