ABSTRACT
The new thinking and nosology brought new populations under the gaze of the alcohologist and renewed concerns for the drinking of the population as a whole as well as national policy controls. The 'new public health' addresses problem-prevention by manipulating the detail of the drinking individual's physical and social context on the one hand, and the national policy on the other. Much of the literature on problem drinking of the 1970s and 1980s has focused on community-based approaches in a similar manner to drug misuse prevention and treatment policy and as part of overlapping movement in the mental health field. The analysis of drinking patterns is replete with increasingly more acute and detailed dissection of drinking communities. Recording and documenting drinking was until quite a matter of analyzing units of consumption — barrels, bottles and other production measures. Coupled with the concept of excessive drinking by quantity is a concern for appropriate drinking relative to place.
