ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on some useful light on the purposes that cost and benefit analyses of alcohol use and misuse may serve. It surveys some issues in measurement, that is methods of counting or figuring particular sums of alcohol use and misuse. This chapter opens some perspectives on estimates that have been widely circulated regarding the rate and effects of alcohol misuse in the US, discussing some problems in attributing significance to these figures, and commenting on their purposes. The thinkers who first put quantitative teeth into the study of society were, principally, the utilitarians David Ricardo and Jeremy Bentham. In gathering data and calculating prospects, a micro analysis is oriented to the projected results of action. The worth of programme comparisons varies quite directly with the precision with which one can delineate the alternative programmes, forecast their results, and compare the net balances of these respective forecasts against each other.
