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2 Perspectives on
Current Alcohol Policies
The simplifying conceptions of alcohol policy presented in chapter 1 and
the diverse avenues for affecting the problems outlined in chapter 2
provide a broad perspective on conceivable alcohol policies. It is useful
to place current policies toward alcohol in this context to see how many
of the conceivable alternatives are now being exploited and what pieces
of the problem lie outside current efforts.
CURRENT ALCOHOL POLICIES AND INSTITUTIONS
Characterizing current alcohol policies with precision is no simple task;
the very term "policy" is ambiguous. It may refer to publicly stated
goals, to specialized institutions predominantly concerned with alcohol,
or to the net effect of all institutions. Another difficulty is that in the
complex institutional structure of the United States, many different
policies are being pursued independently by many separate institu-
tions each with independent purposes, resources, clientele, and au-
thority. Still, a survey of the current institutional setting reveals three
strategically important features.
First is the heavy regulation of the production and distribution of
alcohol. The federal government, operating through the Bureau of A1-
cohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATE) of the Department of the Treas-
ury, collects approximately $5 billion per year from taxes on alcohol.
The 51 state ABC boards exercise substantial influence over the price
and availability of alcohol in off-site premises and, through regulation,
shape some aspects of the contexts of drinking in on-site premises. These
48
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Perspectives on Current Alcohol Policies
49
institutions exert influence on alcohol problems despite the fact that
they are not now explicitly being managed for this purpose. The objec-
tive of BATF's operation is largely to collect revenue and to ensure the
legal and orderly operation of the commercial system for distributing
alcoholic beverages. Thus, although substantial authority over the sup-
ply of alcohol is vested in these institutions and they are both active and
influential in shaping drinking practices (for good or ill), they are not
now being managed for this purpose.
The second strategically important characteristic of the current insti-
tutional setting is the continued existence of powerful cultural beliefs
and attitudes that tend to moderate drinking practices in the United
States. It is easy to forget that one-third of the adult population of the
United States is abstinent and another third drinks very little over the
course of a year. These drinking practices, no less than the heavier
drinking practices of the remaining third of adults, are created and
sustained by powerful, deeply rooted cultural and family traditions. The
majority disapprobation of immoderate drinking is still embodied in
state and local statutes prohibiting drinking by minors, driving while
drunk, and public drunkenness. These laws have recently been subject
to liberalizing trends. Age restrictions on drinking have been lowered,
convictions for drunken driving have been difficult to secure, and, in
perhaps the most significant of the changes, public drunkenness has
been widely "decriminalized." But the continued existence of these laws
and the very moderate drinking practices of most of our population
testify to the continued vitality of public intolerance of immoderate or
reckless drinking.
The third feature of the institutional setting pertaining to alcohol
control policies is the National Institute for Alcohol Abuse and Alco-
holism and the network of state agencies and treatment programs par-
tially spawned and supported by NIAAA's most influential client
groups. This institutional nexus is important in part because it absorbs
a substantial volume of economic resources. Even more important, how-
ever, NIAAA is the most prominent government agency concerned
primarily with alcohol problems. It is therefore the primary institutional
focus for conceiving, articulating, and, to a degree, managing the gov-
ernment's explicit efforts to cope with alcohol problems. For broad and
innovative thinking to be done in this area and for managerial efforts
to be launched to exploit underutilized institutional capacities, NIAAA
must be the lead agency. Since NIAAA is the primary custodian of
alcohol policies at the level of goals and current understandings of the
nature of the problem, it becomes important to know how NIAAA
understands the problem and the appropriate responses.
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REPORT OF THE PANEL
The answer to this question is difficult to pin down. In the articulated
aspirations of representatives of NIAAA and in its organizational struc-
ture, there is a variety of conceptions and approaches. At the level of
agency operations, however, it seems clear that the prevailing underlying
assumption is that the general alcohol problem is largely one of alco-
holism and that the most effective way of dealing with it is to locate and
successfully treat alcoholics. Of course research on alcoholism may well
throw useful light on drinking problems of a less intensive or less chronic
nature, but most of NIAAA's funds, institutional apparatus, and man-
agerial attention have been devoted to treatment delivery, not research
programs. NIAAA searches for more effective modes of treatment and
broader methods for identifying and recruiting "problem drinkers" or
those likely to become alcoholics. Thus, it has tended both to reflect
and sustain the governing idea that alcoholism is a disease for which
treatment is the most appealing policy.
The overall institutional picture, then, is one in which a few major
institutions play important but largely unintentional roles in shaping
drinking practices; and in which the government institution that is most
responsible for shaping our social response to alcohol problems reflects
the current conception of the problem as largely one of alcoholism. The
juxtaposition of this institutional setting with the analytic conception of
the problem developed in chapter 2 prompts an important question: Is
full advantage being taken of the current institutional capacity to cope
with the diverse aspects of alcohol problems, or is the current concept
of alcoholism narrowing our conception of the appropriate objectives
of alcohol policy and diverting society from some important policy al-
ternatives? More specifically, the question is whether the regulatory
apparatus and cultural commitments to temperate drinking could be
utilized more effectively to ameliorate alcohol problems, and if so
whether current policies (and conceptions of the problems) should be
diversified to take better advantages of these institutional opportunities.
THE PRIMA FA CIE CASE FOR PREVENTION
We believe that a significant opportunity for diversifying current policies
does exist. Specifically, there is both a need and an opportunity for
alcohol policies to be diversified to prevent alcohol abuse and problems
in the general population of drinkers. This argument rests on three
observations.
First, as chapter 2 indicates, there are clear limits to what treatment
policies can accomplish by themselves. Treatment policies can be jus-
tified by a humanitarian commitment to care for the casualties of drink-
ing and by the contribution (whatever its size) that treatment makes to
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Perspectives on Current Alcohol Policies
51
prospects for recovery. But it is also clear that bad consequences of
drinking are strewn so widely among the general population of drink-
ers including many for whom treatment would be entirely inappro-
priate—that treatment alone could at best deal with only a portion of
the important social consequences of drinking.
Second, the analysis of existing institutions suggests that while there
is little institutional focus for prevention efforts, there is a surprising
amount of institutional capability. The regulatory apparatus governing
commercial availability remains intact but underutilized for the preven-
tion of alcohol problems. Social sentiment in favor of moderate drinking
remains strong and ensures a supportive climate for broadly targeted
efforts to shift drinking practices in desirable directions. Thus, much of
the institutional basis for prevention programs already exists.
Third, it seems clear that treatment and prevention can be seen as
complements to one another rather than competitors. There is ample
evidence indicating that the number of chronically dependent drinkers
is not a fixed number and is importantly influenced by general drinking
practices and opportunities (Bruun et al. 1975~. Moreover, efforts to
protect lighter drinkers from the worst consequences of occasional ep-
~sodes of drunkenness could also protect heavier drinkers in their more
frequent drinking episodes. In effect, prevention efforts might usefully
supplement treatment efforts by decreasing the size of the population
needing treatment and by shielding the treatment population in ways
that treatment could not accomplish. Furthermore, treatment and pre-
vention programs do not seem to compete for resources. Most preven-
tion programs do not cost the government a great deal of money. They
involve taxation, regulation, and the design of persuasive communica-
tions that could be used over and over again. While not all of these
things are inexpensive to the society as a whole, most of them are
relatively inexpensive in federal budget terms. Besides, the possibility
of important positive interactions between treatment and prevention
would make it wise to invest in both, even if they were equally expensive.
Thus, it seems sensible to consider diversifying alcohol policies by
exploiting a variety of opportunities to prevent drinking problems in the
general population. Note that in considering diversification, we are
thinking, not of an abrupt shift, but of an incremental addition of new
capacities that can be enlarged if they turn out to be successful in han-
dling some aspect of the problem. As discussed below, existing evidence
about the efficacy of prevention policies is not so strong and compelling
as to justify "great experiments," yet, opportunities for dealing with
alcohol problems through prevention programs seem sufficiently at-
tractive to merit close investigation. In the second part of the report,
we look at the available empirical evidence about the efficacy of pre-
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REPORT OF THE PANEL
vention programs. It is first necessary, however, to become more precise
about what we mean by prevention policies.
THE DEFINITION OF PREVENTION POLICIES
The general idea of a prevention policy toward alcoholism and alcohol
abuse is at once too narrow and too broad for our purposes. It is too
narrow because it focuses attention on the harms to be limited and
obscures the fact that benefits of alcohol use exist and should be pro-
tected. It is too broad because all instruments of alcohol policy can be
understood as devices to prevent some bad effects of drinking. Treat-
ment programs, for example, can be understood as devices for pre-
venting cirrhosis from reaching terminal proportions, forestalling sui-
cides, and preventing accidents by motivating chronic alcoholics to
reduce their alcohol use and change other aspects of their lives. To serve
our purposes, then, we need a more precise definition of how we mean
prevention policies to be understood.
Perhaps the most convenient way to develop the concept of prevention
policies is to distinguish the policies we have in mind from clinical al-
coholism treatment programs. From our point of view, such programs
(as a class) have two important characteristics. First, they operate
through a continuing face-to-face relationship with discrete, identified
individuals. Individualized attention begins at intake, when a detailed
client history is taken; continues with a treatment plan calling for con-
tinuing, intensive involvement; and becomes the basic mode of operation
as the progress of a client is continuously monitored on a variety of
dimensions. The services and supervision that operate within this in-
dividualized relationship are the heart of treatment programs. Second,
treatment programs tend to be directed at the relatively small proportion
of drinkers who have experienced the most severe problems with their
drinking and have either asked for or been referred to treatment. This
concentration occurs in part because treatment is sufficiently expensive
that its use is reserved for those who are in the most serious trouble.
The distinctive features of treatment, then, are individualized services
and a focus on drinkers who are already in trouble.
One can logically imagine extending such individualized services to
people who are on some grounds thought destined for trouble as well
as those who are already in it. Examples of such at-risk or high-risk
populations are those beginning to experience problems on the job or
in school related to excessive or ill-timed drinking; young populations
that are just starting to drink but have sufficient problems in other areas
of their lives (for example, an alcoholic parent) to induce concern about
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Perspectives on Current Alcohol Policies 53
their futures; and demographically defined groups (for example, native
Americans) that have previously shown especially high rates of clinical
or other problems with alcohol. Such programs do in fact exist, and are
generally called early detection and intervention, occupational program-
ming, or preventive services. Moreover, they do have a preventive aspect
in that they are directed at populations that are not yet deeply in trouble
with alcohol. On the whole, however, these are really treatment pro-
grams with different kinds of outreach mechanisms. They still depend
on personalized services. Although not confined to people who are
already in severe trouble related to or dependent on drinking, the ability
of such efforts to reach people who may be potentially at risk will be
strongly limited by reliance on personalized services that are expensive,
vaguely defined, and demanding of the client and on detection capa-
bilities that are still at the basic research stage (Institute of Medicine
1980).
The prevention policies on which this report focuses are different
from either treatment programs or preventive services. They include:
taxes on alcohol, regulation of the availability of alcohol, liability rules
that would make bartenders or hosts more responsible for the safety of
their guests, improved enforcement efforts against drunken driving, ed-
ucation programs that present a view of unsafe drinking practices and
encourage bystanders to comment on unsafe practices, and the design
of workplaces and homes to make them safe for people who are intox-
icated. This is a very heterogeneous set of policies, but they are all alike
in the following respect: They are all policies that operate in a nonper-
sonalized way to alter the set of contingencies affecting individuals as they
drink or engage in activities that (when combined with intoxications are
considered risky. In effect, they are designed to manipulate conditions
that will influence either patterns of drinking or the consequences one
can expect from any given drinking practice. The differences between
these programs and treatment are three.
First, the prevention policies operate on a fundamentally nonpersonal
basis. None of these policies depends on a continuing personalized re-
lationship between a program and a drinker. Instead, they operate
through the remote manipulation of a relevant set of incentives and
contingencies: the terms and circumstances under which alcohol is avail-
able, the attitudes of people surrounding the drinkers, and the benignity
of the physical and social environment toward drunkenness.
Second, the programs operate generally throughout the society. The
incentives and contingencies are established for everyone. They become
activated when one begins drinking or engaging in behavior that would
be risky if one had been drinking. Thus, drinkers in many patterns of
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REPORT OF THE PANEL
consumption are affected, in addition to people who may become clumsy
and inattentive as a result of drunkenness, fatigue, senility, or anger.
Third, with the one exception of education programs directed at drink-
ers themselves, the programs that we focus on do not operate by seeking
major changes in the personalities and orientations of drinkers. Instead
they seek to alter the set of opportunities, risks, and expectations that
surround drinkers in society. To be sure, the orientations of individuals
may change as they adjust their attitudes to the altered conditions sur-
rounding drinking, but the attitudes and drives of drinkers are not the
immediate target. Prevention programs seek to avoid the intrusions
associated with therapy and concentrate on managing the set of external
contingencies that operate on drinkers as they drink, pair their drinking
with other activities, and accept a variety of risks associated with their
drinking from the external environment. In fact, even education pro-
grams avoid the most penetrating kinds of intrusions simply because,
although they carry personal significance for drinkers, they do not seek
out specially identified individuals and track their behavior. Thus, the
prevention programs that are the focus of our study avoid sustained
personalized efforts to alter the individual attitudes and drives of indi-
vidual drinkers.
These characteristics seem to give the prevention policies described
above some important advantages. First, because they operate imper-
sonally without a continuing relationship between an agency and an
identified individual, they do not create the problems that may arise
from "labeling" individuals as deviants. To be sure, a drunken-driving
arrest is an adverse personal effect, and encouraging third parties to
help regulate the drinking of others may exacerbate social conflict over
drinking (as similar efforts have done in the area of smoking). Yet
prevention programs involve many fewer of society's explicit labeling
activities than treatment programs do.
Second, because these programs broadcast their effects generally
throughout society, they may be a low-cost way of reaching the general
population of drinkers. A tax increase affects all drinkers in proportion
to their consumption. An effective media program can help educate
large numbers of people at low per-capita costs. Safer highways protect
everybody who drives whenever they are driving not just a few problem
drinkers. Of course, the fact that large numbers of people can be reached
at a relatively low per-capita cost does not necessarily make such pro-
grams valuable. If they produce no important changes in the pattern of
drinking or in the set of consequences that result from any given pattern
of drinking, the lower unit cost is hardly a virtue. If, however? as we
think the arguments and evidence of chapter 2 warrant, it is important
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Perspectives on Current Alcohol Policies
55
to reach a large population of drinkers, these kinds of programs rep-
resent an inexpensive way to start. The question of whether any of them
are likely to produce any important, beneficial results is the dominant
focus of the second part of this report.
Before looking at this question, however, it is important to consider
some basic normative and pragmatic arguments against such broad ef-
forts to shape drinking practices. Unless these basic objections can be
overcome or at least placed within limits pending the receipt of evidence,
the attractiveness of these general prevention policies is in jeopardy.
OBJECTIONS TO PREVENTION POLICIES
The most fundamental objection to the idea that government should
seek to shape drinking practices is that such action may violate common
understandings about the proper role of government in a free society.
In this view, government may place constraints on individual liberty
only when one person's actions materially affect the welfare of another
who is unable to protect himself or herself *om the unwanted intrusion;
voluntarily assumed personal risks are beyond government bounds.
Moreover, our legal system is designed largely to restrain government
from acting until after the fact of intrusion has been established, not on
mere presumption or potential. Since drinking produces adverse exter-
nal effects only occasionally, general drinking practices seem for the
most part inappropriate matters for official concern. Thus, any govern-
mental effort to influence drinking practices may be seen as an inap-
propriate paternalistic restriction on freedom irrespective of how
gentle or heavy-handed the intrusion.
One can disagree with this conclusion at several points in the argu-
ment. First, individual freedom is not the only premise defining the
proper role of government. There are other (equally venerable) notions
of politics in which the government is called on to enhance the general
welfare, promote the spread of knowledge, and encourage civil behavior
among its citizens as well as guarantee various liberties. Alternatively,
one could cite the extent of harmful, irreversible, external effects of
drinking practices that clearly do warrant government interference (e.g.,
reckless drunken driving or piloting a plane while under the influence
of alcohol). Thus, the basic principle that government should constrain
private conduct only when that conduct affects others in important ways
need not be, and has not been, an absolute bar to governmental efforts
to shape drinking practices.
Beyond this fundamental normative issue, several more pragmatic
issues arise. The most important rest on the judgment that a repre-
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sentative government is unable to exercise any independent influence
on drinking practices. This argument appears in varied forms. Some-
times it is argued that government influence on drinking can do nothing
more than reflect prevailing practices. When we observe a change in
government policy, it is not because someone has decided on rational
grounds that a change is desirable, but because large cultural forces are
at work. Government actions are corks bobbing in great cultural tides.
If by some chance a government policy were established at odds with
prevailing practices, it would work substantial mischief making de-
viants or criminals of the large groups in the population who stubbornly
refused to alter their habits, fueling the development of illegal operations
to meet the needs of those who are now outlawed, and generally sac-
rificing the legitimacy and effectiveness of government. But then, the
policy would shortly collapse in the face of continued private intransig-
ence. The implication of these judgments is that since government policy
must mirror prevailing practice, it is fruitless to rely on the government
to shape those practices. Such efforts will be at best redundant and at
worst self-defeating.
A slightly less extreme view holds that government may indeed in-
fluence current drinking practices, but in unexpected and potentially
dangerous ways. Since current drinking practices are supported by in-
formal but nonetheless strong and long-standing networks of beliefs,
relationships, and other social practices, and since drinkers will seek to
maintain their current patterns against both new inconveniences and the
risks of deviance, the best the government can hope to accomplish is
to set in motion many modest but unpredictable changes in actual drink-
ing practices. It is certain that at least some people will try to maintain
centuries-old practices against new prescriptions and will suffer incon-
venient and painful losses in some dimensions of their lives as a result
of the new policies. With such an uncertain (and potentially bad) result,
it is foolish for the government to act.
The central insight in these views is that informal social controls are
much more powerful in shaping collective drinking practices than the
government could ever be and that it is dangerous to have government
conceptions of drinking be wildly at odds with the drinking practices
that emerge from the informal system. Clearly, there is wisdom in these
views. But the general observation nevertheless implies that properly
chosen governmental actions could be valuable. It leaves open the pos-
sibility, for example, that government prescriptions that were slightly
more constraining than current practices, that put a gentle brake on
dangerous shifts in current practices or accelerated favorable trends,
might operate to shape drinking practices in a positive way without
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Perspectives on Current Alcohol Policies
57
doing much harm. Moreover, to point out that some drinkers will prob-
ably be made worse off by a particular policy does not eliminate the
value of the proposed policy: it depends on how many people move in
what directions in response to the policy. It is by no means obvious that
the largest effect will be for drinkers to remain intransigent and therefore
suffer. It is also possible that over time the informal controls will change
under consistently applied pressure, and drinkers will adapt as though
things had "always been this way."
A final pragmatic objection is that prevention efforts cannot effec-
tively alter drinking practices at low cost. Instead, to be effective such
policies would have to "over-deter": to penalize and restrain drinking
behavior that is not or would not be troublesome, interfering with the
long-standing use of alcohol as a pleasant accompaniment to occasions
of relaxation and festivity, far out of proportion to whatever bad be-
havior and undesirable consequences are averted. Certainly, in sizing
up the effects of policies, it is essential to look closely at the untrou-
blesome, beneficial conduct that might be discouraged and-disrupted,
to see how much good behavior might be suppressed along with the
bad. But this is an empirical judgment, and it is best to let the available
evidence speak for itself.
In summary, the strongest objections to governmental efforts to shape
drinking practices are not insurmountable barriers. Instead, they suggest
useful principles to recognize in considering whether and how govern-
ment policies should be formed. The pragmatic objections point to the
subtlety with which specific policy instruments must be chosen and em-
ployed: they must be sensitive not only to the consequences of given
practices, but also to the kinds and degrees of support for prevailing
practices. Interestingly enough, because the vast majority of the pop-
ulation drinks safely most of the time, the government, if it did nothing
more than reflect prevailing practices back to the population, would be
exercising an important moderating influence.
The normative objections suggest a second important principle: We
should be aware of who and how many people are the intended bene-
ficiaries of certain kinds of prescriptions and select the particular policy
instruments accordingly. It is of great importance to recognize commonly
understood lines that divide ideal or appropriate areas for government
interference from less appropriate or inappropriate areas. Proportion-
ality must be maintained between the coerciveness of the measures used
and the extent to which policy goals are consistent with prevailing prac-
tices and common ideologies about state intervention. A line defended
by criminal statutes must command wider compliance (i.e., admit more
of current drinking practices) and be focused on behavior that produces
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more adverse external effects than a line defended by weaker measures
such as economic incentives, civil sanctions, advisory educational pro-
grams, or exemplary actions by government. This suggests that one
might want to establish a variety of lines with varying degrees of force.
Criminal statutes should be sparsely used to discourage only the rarest
and most dangerous conduct. Other programs could be used more lib-
erally and establish somewhat more controversial goals.
CATEGORIES OF PREVENTION POLICIES
The objections to prevention that we have just reviewed and the prin-
ciples of selection to which they lead indicate that prevention policies
must be fashioned from a variety of materials. We need therefore an
orderly way to identify the different approaches that are available, in
order to judge their suitability for the normative climates and practical
occasions for which they might be used.
The conception of alcohol problems presented in chapter 2 invites a
sorting of prevention policies according to how they seek to ameliorate
the problems (cf. Bruun 1971~.
First are those policies that, by regulating the terms of commercial
availability, operate primarily on the dimensions of alcohol consump-
tion. These include taxes, restrictions on the number of outlets and
hours of sale, limits on the kinds and quantities of alcohol sold, etc. Of
course, many of these policies react to the contexts of drinking as well
as the quantities of alcohol consumed. Relative proportions of on-prem-
ise and off-premise drinking might be importantly influenced by com-
mercial regulation as well as many details of on-premise drinking, such
as location, activities paired with drinking, and so on. But the dominant
and most important thrust of policies regulating commercial availability
is to shape broad patterns of consumption over time with the manage-
ment of contexts as an important additional factor.
Second are policies that seek to influence drinking practices directly
by suggesting (with varying degrees of force) what are unsafe or inap-
propriate practices. Such policies can be written into law (such as laws
against public intoxication or drunken driving). They can be conveyed
through explicit educational programs. Or they can emerge implicitly
from the accumulated actions of government. The particular vehicle
used is important, of course. Sensitive issues about proper relationships
between the state and private drinking conduct are raised in choosing
one vehicle over another. It is equally true that the force and precision
of a control is influenced by the forms through which it is disseminated.
Perhaps the most interesting thing at stake in the choice of vehicle is
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Perspectives on Current Alcohol Policies
59
the enthusiasm with which the public can be mobilized to change their
customary drinking practices. The clearer the message, the stronger the
government's commitment to it, and the closer the conception is to
widely shared private attitudes toward drinking the greater will be the
effort made by millions of private individuals to promote compliance.
If images of unsafe drinking patterns can be persuasively communicated,
they may begin to influence observable drinking practices and their
consequences.
Third are policies that are designed to make the external environment
less hostile to drinkers to make the world a safer one in which to be
drunk or similarly impaired. This set of policies involves changes in both
the physical and the social environments. Changes in the physical en-
vironment could include safer structures, consumer products, and ma-
chines. Changes in the social environment could include more effective
emergency medical services or more sensitive police reponses to do-
mestic disturbances. Note that there is an important interaction between
policies designed to reprove a specific drinking practice and policies
designed to influence the social environment of drinkers. It is perhaps
impossible to motivate individuals to refrain from a given way of drinking
but to be perfectly tolerant of others who continue to drink in that way.
Thus, extensive reliance on policies promoting certain conceptions of
drinking will guarantee greater problems for those whose behavior is
not consistent with the conception.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
When current alcohol control policies are viewed in the context of the
current institutional setting and against the backdrop of the analytic
conception of the problem developed in chapter 2, an interesting op-
portunity appears. It may be desirable to diversify our policies in the
direction of prevention programs that operate on the general population,
through the management of contingencies that affect drinking, the con-
texts commonly paired with drinking, and the general features of the
environment that make drinking in given contexts more or less risky.
At a minimum, these policies may succeed in reaching a population that
is having trouble with drinking, but would be unlikely to be involved
in (and for the most part would be unsuitable subjects for) treatment.
Beyond this aim, however, these prevention policies may be effective
measures for reducing the number of clinical alcoholics.
In the remaining chapters of this report, we take a closer look at the
available evidence about the efficacy of these prevention policies, fol-
lowing the lines of inquiry suggested in chapter 2. In chapter 4, we
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examine the potential of policies influencing price and availability. In
chapter 5, we look at the potential for trying to shape drinking practices
directly through laws, education, and symbolic action. In chapter 6, we
consider what could usefully be done to make the environment safer for
drinkers (and others). At the conclusion of the second part of the report,
we shall have a more sharply defined view of the potential of what are
here described as prevention policies.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
prevention policies
