Bøker av Marcus Grant

In the early 1980s, emphasis had shifted from the treatment of alcohol problems to their prevention. Yet no clear integrated policy yet existed about how alcohol problems could best be prevented. Many different strategies were put forward as solutions but some were in competition with each other, while some were actually incompatible.Originally published in 1983, what this book does is to draw together a cross section of these different and competing voices so as to give a sense of the quality and direction of the great alcohol debate at the time. After setting into context some of the basic questions to do with the prevention of alcohol problems, the authors knit together and juxtapose short contributions from a very wide variety of experts from around the world. Clinicians, educators, sociologists, advertisers, marketing men, economists, philosophers, geneticists and international civil servants present different points of view on health education, the media, advertising, trade, the law, the environment and on the ethical basis of the debate itself. The authors bravely attempt to pull some general sense out of this profusion of what the way ahead is likely to be.It should be noted that this reissue very much reflects the context of the times in which it was written and that the contributors were participating in a debate where differences of opinion were actively encouraged.

In the 1970s, an important change of emphasis had occurred in the field of alcoholism. Instead of seeing alcoholism as an 'all or none phenomenon' it was now recognised that a continuum of alcohol problems existed so that individual cases could show different degrees of dependence and different degrees of harm.Originally published in 1979, this book examines the implications of this change of emphasis. It looks at definitional, aetiological, epidemiological and socio-cultural questions and contains contributions from acknowledged experts in all of these areas. The scientific evidence in each area is fully reviewed and made comprehensible to the non-specialist reader and similarities between trends in thinking in different fields are emphasised.In addition, the book analyses the implications of the modern view of alcohol problems in terms of their theoretical basis and their practical application. A rational and pragmatic approach to the problems of working with alcoholics is analysed in some detail so that the links between new ideas and their manifestation in clinical practice are made clear.At the time, this book represented a multi-disciplinary approach to a complex problem where previous thinking had been clouded by too ready acceptance of untested hypotheses.

First published in 1983, the real nature of the relationship between economics and alcohol is explored in detail for the first time. It argues for increased participation by economists in the processes of social policy decision-making and considers the key issues of cost-benefit analyses, control policies, taxation and programme efficiency.