Folkehelseperspektivet og liberaliseringen av nordisk alkoholpolitikk

Abstract

Nordic alcohol policy has traditionally had as its main target to prevent alcohol abuse and its consequences - drunkenness resulting in aggression, violence and other anti social acts as well as chronic abuse resulting in neglected children and poverty. However, from the late 1960s the focus has gradually changed. Instead there has been an increased preoccupation with the harmful consequences for the users themselves – especially health problems - resulting not only from alcohol abuse but also from more or less moderate drinking.

The argument in this paper is that the introduction of the public health perspective - with its preoccupation with the health problems alcohol cause for the users - has weakened the traditional alcohol policy. The argument for a strict regulation of alcohol is less obvious when based 0n harmful consequences for the users themselves, as compared with harmful effects for others. This is not least the case when the harmful effects often is of a kind which the public do not experience themselves, but may only be demonstrated through epidemiological research. In this situation the necessity of a restrictive alcohol policy is difficult to uphold.