ABSTRACT
Public health has been an important target for government policy throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Basic improvements in sanitation and the working environment have reduced mortality rates from major causes of deaths such as infectious diseases, and have increased population longevity. The effect of these policies has been to improve quality of life for the majority. Given these basic improvements, more recent public health policy has focused on the link between changing patterns of consumption and the incidence of disease. In particular, tobacco use has been associated with lung cancer and bronchitis, and alcohol use with liver cirrhosis and digestive disorders. It is now claimed that the quality of life should be improved still further by government action to restrict the individual’s freedom to consume hazardous goods in order to reduce the levels of associated harm within the population (see, for example, reports from the Royal College of Psychiatrists 1979, 1986; the World Health Organization 1985; the Royal College of Physicians 1983; the Royal College of General Practitioners 1986).
