Alcohol Control Policies

Abstract

In May 1975, the Twenty-eighth World Health Assembly adopted a resolution (WHA 28:81) which requested the Director-General of W.H.O. to draw special attention to the extent and seriousness of the individual, public health, and social problems associated with increasing alcohol consumption in many parts of the world; also, Member States and W.H.O., in co-operation with other competent bodies, were urged to develop information systems as a basis for policies and measures aimed at the control of alcohol consumption that endangered public health. Earlier, in 1973, the W.H.O. Expert Committee on Drug Dependence, in its twentieth report, gave special consideration to problems arising from the consumption of alcoholic beverages.¹ The W.H.O. Regional Office for Europe has also been interested in the health implications of alcohol consumption and recently collaborated with the Finnish Foundation for Alcohol Studies and the Addiction Research Foundation of Ontario in a study on alcohol control policies in relation to public health. The main points from this study are given below.

Reprinted, with permission, from W.H.O. Chronicle, 30 (1976), 243.