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. 2018 Mar;79(2):239-243.
doi: 10.15288/jsad.2018.79.239.

Alcohol's Harm to Others: Opportunities and Challenges in a Public Health Framework

Katherine J Karriker-Jaffe  1 , Robin Room  2   3 , Norman Giesbrecht  4 , Thomas K Greenfield  1
Affiliations

Alcohol's Harm to Others: Opportunities and Challenges in a Public Health Framework

Katherine J Karriker-Jaffe et al. J Stud Alcohol Drugs. 2018 Mar.

Abstract

The emergent and growing body of research on alcohol's harm to others (AHTO), or secondhand effects of drinking, has important implications for prevention, intervention, and policy. Those victimized by other drinkers tend to favor effective alcohol policies more than their nonvictimized peers, but often a community's impulse will be to combat AHTO by targeting and stigmatizing individual heavy drinkers, rather than taking a public health approach to reducing harm. Here we discuss opportunities and challenges in selecting ways of reducing AHTO. We make a case for adopting joint public health and individual approaches to reduce AHTO.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have no conflict of interest to report.

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