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Alcohol dependence
is the development of characteristic deviant behaviors associated with
prolonged consumption of excessive amounts of alcohol. Alcoholism is a
chronic illness of undetermined etiology with an insidious onset, showing
recognizable symptoms and signs proportionate to its severity. Most of the
time an approach has benefited so many alcoholics as effectively as the
help they have offered themselves through coalitions and partnerships that
are focused on alcohol prevention or intervention. One of these is the
Coalition for the Prevention of Alcohol Problems (CPAP).
The goal of the
Coalition for the Prevention of
Alcohol Problems is to promote programs and
procedures that help minimize problems of alcohol dependence and
addiction. The coalition actively promotes restraint and abstinence
against alcohol consumption in their agenda. It should more accurately be
called the Coalition for the Prevention of Alcohol. This coalition of
groups is co-chaired by George Hacker of the Alcohol Policies Project and
Stacia Murphy of the National Council on Alcohol and Drug Dependence (NCADD)
(Hanson, 2006).
Hacker has also headed the
temperance-oriented Alcohol Policies Project of the Center for Science in
the Public Interest (CSPI) for three decades. He is Co-Chair of the
Coalition for the Prevention of Alcohol Problems, whose members include
the American Council on Alcohol Problems and many other restraint,
abstinence, and discipline activist groups (Hanson, 2006). For this
reason, the coalition is co-chaired by CSPI and NCADD, both groups where
Hacker is part of.
The coalition is made up of
groups or members including the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU),
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormon Church), the
American Council on Alcohol Problems (earlier called the Anti-Saloon
League), the Temperance League of Kentucky, the General Board of Global
Ministries, and the Illinois Church Action on Alcohol Problems (Hanson,
2006).
There are several issues which
the Coalition has identified as priorities. These include:
(a) restrictions on alcohol advertising;
(b) improvements
in alcoholic beverage labeling, including strengthening and expanding the
current mandated warning label and providing additional consumer on
alcoholic beverage containers, such as ingredients, alcohol content,
calories, information about standard units of service, and a toll-free
telephone number for consumer questions about alcohol;
(c) increase in federal
alcohol excise taxes and equalization of the tax rate on all beverage
alcohol types;
(d) stronger regulation of
alcoholic beverage industry practices by federal agencies, including the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the Federal Trade Commission;
(e) expanded research on
alcohol advertising, labeling and tax issues through the
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, and other public and private agencies;
(f) promotion within the
legislative and executive branches of government of a better understanding
of alcohol as America's costliest and most widespread drug problem; and
(g) stronger demand-reduction
policies related to alcohol, and proposals to expand public alcoholism
treatment and prevention initiatives (CPAP website, 2006).
Guiding
committees, such as the CSPI, NCADD, American Public Health Association,
American Academy of Family Physicians, American Academy of Pediatrics,
among many others, meet periodically in Washington, DC to set the
Coalition’s advocacy agenda and strategy. Organization members are invited
to participate in CPAP meetings, keep informed through the CPAP listserv,
sign onto coalition letters, and help disseminate grassroots action alerts
that will advance the Coalition’s agenda (CPAP website, 2006).
To summarize, the
coalition offers programs that focuses on support or encouragement and
education of the public regarding high-visibility, high-leverage alcohol
policies, alcohol taxation, advertising and marketing, underage drinking,
labeling and college binge drinking, which are issues considered as
priorities of the coalition in their effort to minimize problems of
alcohol dependence and addiction. |
