Positioning alcohol's harm to others (AHTO) within alcohol research: A reinvented perspective with mixed policy implications

Abstract

AIMS & DESIGN - This overview analyses the recent emergence of the concept of alcohol's harm to others (AHTO) and the potential policy implications embedded in this research perspective. The overview is an account of ways in which recent alcohol research has grasped the kind of harm that goes beyond the drinker. It positions the dimensions of alcohol's harm to others as a research perspective in relation to other established research approaches to alcohol-related problems. FINDINGS - Several concepts presented within different disciplines have focused on how adverse consequences of drinking go beyond the individual drinker. However, the scientific discussion is still characterised by an obvious conceptual instability. Alongside the growing research interest in alcohol's harm to others there is a political discourse stressing the urgency of alcohol policy measures protecting innocent victims against damage from others' alcohol use. CONCLUSIONS - In drawing attention to the interactional nature of alcohol-related harm, the AHTO perspective brings a novel syntagmatic and cross-cutting aspect to established traditions in alcohol research and forms a unique scientific approach. The AHTO perspective has the potential for creating a political will to move the alcohol policy agenda forward, but the question of a suitable and credible term is unresolved. Conceptually, the AHTO perspective is still in a state of flux, while politically it is loaded with considerable ambitions and interests related to causal attributions and ethical conclusions embedded in the research perspective.