Lead Editorial - Industrial epidemics, public health advocacy and the alcohol industry: lessons from other fields
Addiction 102 (9), 1335–1339.




Research on alcohol policies has now made it possible to grade strategies and interventions in terms of their effectiveness in controlling excessive alcohol use as well as alcohol-related problems .

The evidence suggests that there are a variety of effective strategies from which policy-makers can choose. Unfortunately, many popular strategies, such as designated driver programs, tend to be ineffective, and the more effective strategies, such as alcohol taxes, tend to be unpopular.

In persuading policy-makers to consider effective but unpopular alcohol policies, it might be instructive to frame the issue in terms of what we refer to here as ‘industrial epidemics’. This framing may be contrasted with more traditional approaches, which in the past have portrayed alcohol problems as the consequence of a moral failing, or as a chronic disease engendered by genetic, psychological and environmental causes.

As this editorial will suggest, the notion of an industrial epidemic invites the application of public health concepts and shifts the policy focus from the ‘agent’ (i.e. alcohol) or the ‘host’ (e.g. the problem drinker) to the ‘disease vector’ (i.e. the alcohol industry and its associates), which in many ways is responsible for the exposure of vulnerable populations to the risks of alcohol.

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