Full title: Under the influence: 4. Election prospects triumph over public health.

Paper by Jonathan Gornall. Published in BMJ in January 2014.

The first in a series of papers commissioned by Addiction which attempt to estimate the problems of 'addiction' globally and in different geographical regions.

Such estimates are available, but there is a need to collate and evaluate these to arrive at the best available synthetic figures. 

Economics and Public Health Policy

Based on a simulation model, OECD analyses show that several alcohol policies have the potential to reduce rates of heavy drinking, regular or episodic, and alcohol dependence, in three countries, by 5% to 10%. This would take those countries a long way towards achieving the voluntary target of reducing harmful alcohol use by 10% by 2025, a target adopted by the World Health Assembly in 2013 as part of the NCD Global Monitoring Framework. The OECD analysis found that governments’ ability to design and implement wide-ranging prevention strategies, combining the strengths of different policy approaches, is critical to success.