Search results

Most of the literature on the topic of alcohol consumption and externalities related to it identify adverse effects. The effects of these possible externalities on government financial condition remain relatively unexplored in the literature. In economics, the theory of social costs related to unrestricted economic behavior such as alcohol consumption has been explored since the early twentieth century which spread into the field of public administration through welfare economics. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper is a study of the possible effects of alcohol consumption on state financial condition across state governments in the USA, based on a mediation analysis with PROCESS.

This paper finds that there is a significant mediated effect of alcohol consumption on state financial condition through some economic and demographic variables. The paper explores these findings as well as future research.

This is the first paper that takes an interdisciplinary approach to the social cost and public finance literature with a specific focus on alcohol consumption.

The annual cost of alcohol‐related harm in the UK is estimated to be between £17.7 and £25.1 billion with healthcare costs alone reaching £2.7 billion and the costs of alcohol‐fuelled crime and disorder accounting for £7.3 billion each year. The aim of the study was to examine the prevalence of alcohol use disorders (AUD) in prison and probation settings in the North East of England, and to compare the ability of the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) and Offender Assessment System (OASys) at identifying alcohol‐related need in probation clients. A quantitative prevalence study was carried out using anonymous questionnaires with participants from four prisons and three probation offices in the North East who voluntarily completed the AUDIT questionnaire during a 1‐month period in 2006. Response outcomes on AUDIT were compared with OASys scores which identify alcohol‐related need in probation. At the time of the study OASys scores were not available for offenders in prison. Seven hundred and fifteen questionnaires were completed. Sixty‐three per cent of men and 57% of women were identified as having an AUD with over a third of all individuals scoring within the possibly dependant range (20+ on AUDIT). Around 40% of probation cases who were classified as either hazardous, harmful or possibly dependant drinkers on AUDIT were not identified by OASys. The results indicate that the prevalence of AUD in offenders is much higher than in the general population. In addition, current methods of identifying offenders with alcohol‐related need in probation are flawed and as many such people go undetected. Alcohol assessment procedures need to be improved in criminal justice setting order to correctly identify people with AUD.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the cost and benefit of a community-based alcohol consumption control program during the Buddhist Lent (BL) period in terms of social return on investment (SROI).

The research team evaluated the program in four selected villages from four regions using standard SROI. Relevant stakeholders were involved in the evaluation design and program impact map construction. Data, including costs, were collected from literatures, official documents, stakeholder interviews and focus group discussions. Alcohol abstinence and related data during and after the 2015 BL period were gathered from a survey questionnaire. The SROI ratio presented the social benefits compared against the total social investment.

The program was effective in producing a greater social value (2.7–5.9 times) than the cost of investment in every village. Cost savings from alcohol consumption constituted a major proportion of the program’s value.

The community-based alcohol consumption control program during BL can provide value for investment. Information from this study can be used by policy makers in their decision to continue or scale up the program. The SROI approach mainly relies on stakeholders that may present a bias; however, further study such as social cost-benefit analysis could provide additional insights.

Organizations are increasingly confronted with legitimacy threats related to the perceived social costs of their business activities. Despite a significant amount of research on the responses of individual organizations, surprisingly limited attention has been paid to the collective activities firms may engage to address such issues. In this paper, we use institutional theory as a lens for an exploratory case study of Issue-Based Industry Collective (IBIC) action in the alcohol industry. Our findings identify a new organizational form, the IBIC and inspire new research avenues at the intersection of business collective action, social issues, and institutional theory.

The purpose of this paper is to present a review of the literature on alcohol consumption, the externality cost of alcohol consumption, and the effectiveness of policy options.

Evidence on the cost to society of alcohol consumption, the amount of excise tax collected, the demand response of consumers, and the effectiveness of alcohol‐control policies is reviewed.

Alcohol excise taxes generally, but not everywhere, fail to recover the externality costs placed on society that arise from alcohol consumption. Where externality costs are greater than excise revenue higher excise taxes are one effective and appropriate policy response. Complementary policies to higher excise taxes are likely to include: the provision of more information about harmful effects to consumers, especially the young; greater enforcement of drunk‐driving laws and zero tolerance drunk‐driving laws for young drivers. Restrictions on the opening hours of late night venues may have a modest impact on reducing costs, while advertising restrictions are unlikely to be effective.

Typically. articles on alcohol consider a single issue. This review paper brings together information from both the health stream of alcohol studies and the economics stream of alcohol studies and provides a useful survey and synthesis of the literature.

South Africa is among the world's highest levels of alcohol consumption per drinker. Liquor abuse is hence rampant and many drinkers engage in risky drinking regularly. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the problem of liquor abuse and seek to understand the degree to which respondents are aware of the alcohol problem in South Africa and whether they have experienced incidents of alcoholism, its impacts and in particular, the study seeks to determine the degree to which minors are exposed to liquor. Awareness of the seriousness of the problem is crucial to finding a lasting solution to it.

This paper conducted a survey in five provinces of the socio‐economic aspects of liquor abuse. These are Eastern Cape, Gauteng, Kwazulu Natal (KZN), Mpumalanga and Western Cape provinces. The paper intends to address whether there are: differences in liquor abuse between experiences of demographic (racial) groupings per province; differences in the knowledge of alcohol‐related activities and impacts per province; and differences in exposure of minors to liquor‐related violence per province.

South Africans are generally aware of the liquor abuse problem and many have had personal experiences or know family members who have had personal experiences. Liquor abuse is associated strongly with negative social activities in the country. Among occupational groups, administrative officers in Gauteng and Mpumalanga are significantly associated with being transported by drunk drivers. Drinking at work is significantly associated with professionals in KZN.

There are few studies that examine issues related to the problem of liquor abuse and the awareness of its seriousness. The findings could assist in understanding how to target education campaigns to inform the public of the problem of liquor abuse.

Physical comorbidities of alcohol misuse are common and result in frequent attendance to hospitals with estimated £3.5bn annual cost to the NHS in England. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effect of the hospital in-reach team of the Leeds Addiction Unit (LAU) in reducing hospital service utilization in people with alcohol dependence.

This is a retrospective cohort study, with a mirror-image design. The authors included all patients who had wholly alcohol attributable admission(s) to Leeds Teaching NHS Hospitals Trust (LTHT) during a four-month period between January and April 2013 and received treatment from LAU. The primary outcome measures were changes in A and E attendance (A&E) attendances, number of hospital admissions and days spent in hospital between the three months before and after the LAU intervention.

During the four-month period, there were 1,711 wholly alcohol attributable admissions related to 1,145 patients. LAU saw 265 patients out of them 49 who had wholly alcohol attributable admissions engaged in treatment with LAU. Of those who engaged 33 (67.3 per cent) had fewer A&E attendances, 34 (69.4 per cent) had fewer admissions and 39 (80 per cent) spent fewer days in hospital in the three months after compared to three months before. There was a significant reduction in total number of hospital admissions (78 vs 41, mean=1.56 vs 0.82, p<0.001) and days spent in hospital (490 vs 146, mean=9.8 vs 2.92, p<0.001).

This mirror-image study suggests that an alcohol hospital in-reach team could be effective in reducing acute hospital service utilization by engaging with the frequent attenders with alcohol misuse complications.

This paper will reflect on the impact of the Licensing Act 2003 (LA03). It will focus primarily on how the LA03 has been introduced to, and has influenced, the night‐time economy (NTE). More specifically, it will examine the impact of the LA03 on alcohol‐related crime, disorder and harm to health, within an urban context. It will review the evidence base for the impact of the LA03, suggesting reasons why the UK experience of extended trading hours is not consistent with international evidence. It will examine the mixed findings from evaluations as to its success/failures/limited influence, and discuss its impact on a number of organisations involved in the promotion and safety of the NTE. It will highlight the continued struggles encountered within the NTE, between the promotion of an enjoyable and profitable NTE, and those who have responsibility for maintaining a safe NTE environment. It will also discuss potential extraneous factors that have superseded the LA03, before concluding by offering and discussing some possible avenues for future direction.

After a period of 20 years of successful growth in sales in the international wine business, the upcoming International Alcohol Policy is endangering the economic sustainability of the wine business. To reduce alcohol‐caused hazards and harm, the International Alcohol Policy favours taxes and minimum prices for all alcoholic beverages. This policy is based on a large number of empirical studies on the price elasticity of alcoholic beverages. The purpose of this paper is to ask whether higher taxes on alcoholic beverages can solve the problems caused by excessive alcohol consumption or whether they are largely ineffective while producing other sustained damage at the same time.

The paper evaluates the results of studies on the price elasticity of alcoholic beverages by using the available results of studies on consumer decision making, focusing in particular on the relevance of price elasticity in comparison to the relevance of individually available budgets and prefer ences. In that case the contrast between alcoholics (consumer segment causing alcoholism) and average consumers is analysed using knowledge of the great differences in preferences between consumer segments.

Wine is highly affected by this alcohol policy due to the expectation of a decrease in overall consumption and the very high costs of alcohol content‐related taxes paid by all wine consumers. The price elasticity of demand for wine is analysed to be much higher than for beer and wine consumers are far away from alcoholism.

The big social problem of alcoholism has to be underlined here. This problem and its spread internationally demands an examination of the effectiveness of this alcohol policy on prices and the development of and checks on new instruments for the direct control of alcoholics.

The international alcohol policy is an important field which needs to be analysed scientifically in more depth and in the framework of sustainability, with a focus on harmonizing social, economic and environmental aims. The paper shows that the current instruments used internationally in the alcohol policy cause large economic problems for wine consumers, as well as for wine producers and merchants, without solving the social problems of alcohol‐related hazards and harm.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the views of drug and alcohol workers on existing alcohol-related public health policies in the UK. Alcohol consumption is closely linked to negative health outcomes, social problems and increasing cost burdens for the UK public, yet alcohol consumption is legal and drinking alcohol is a normalised feature of society.

Nine drug and alcohol workers completed semi-structured interviews, exploring awareness of alcohol-related public health strategies, views on how both their clients and the public orient towards drinking behaviour, and perceptions of links between alcohol treatment and public health services.

Ambivalence towards alcohol-related public health strategies, and a lack of mutual awareness and coordination between public health and treatment services were expressed by participants. Participants felt that public health strategies around alcohol were out of reach to their client group, and failing to have a behavioural change effect on the wider public. Participants proposed several ways of improving public health strategies.

Drug and alcohol workers are potentially valuable contributors in developing public health policy. Their views, based both on interactions with service users and on occupationally influenced observations of society, could be utilised more effectively than is currently the case.

This study uniquely ties together public health and treatment aspects of alcohol services and employs a methodology that opens the way for further research and clinical development.