Marcus Grant

Marcus Grant is president of the International Centre For Alcohol Policy, Former director of a UK-based NGO, Alcohol Education Centre, which provided national coordination of post-qualification training on alcohol problems for health and social service staff. The Alcohol Education Centre, based at Maudsley NHS Trust London, was one of four national bodies concerned with alcohol misuse in the UK, now replaced with Alcohol Concern and the Medical Council on Alcohol. Grant then worked for the World Health Organisation (WHO), where he was responsible for global activities on the prevention of alcohol and drug abuse. He resigned from WHO in 1994 to set up ICAP.

Marcus Grant and colleagues published a book in 1999 'Drinking Patterns and their Consequences' in the view of one reviewer the writers involvement with the Alcohol industry undermines their findings and essentially makes different policy recommendations than other more 'independent' experts when considering the same evidence. ^[1]

The context of the publication of Grant's book is worth mentioning. Two previous publications 'Alcohol Control Policies in Public Health Perspective' (Bruun et al.,1975), commonly known as the pink book, and 'Alcohol Policy and the Public Good' (Edwards et al., 1992) both focused on the reduction of alcohol harm by limiting availability and increasing cost through taxation. These measures are quite clearly at odds with the alcohol industry and some governemtns as alcohol taxation is a major source of revenue and the alcohol industry is a huge employer and powerful player in industry.

The industry's response to the 1992 book was spearheaded by the Portman Group, an organisation funded entirely by the alcohol industry. Portman Group reportedly offered several British scientists a fee of £2000 to write anonymous critiques. Babor and colleagues (1996) subsequently described this type of activity in the following way: ‘When one begins to see scientists with industry connections being encouraged to attack independent researchers, industry supported commentators attacking publicly supported policy makers and commercial interests trying to set the research agenda, this is not only a cause for concern, but a recipe for disaster’.

It is in this context that Drinking Patterns and Their Consequences was written. The book is co-edited by Marcus Grant who is from the USA-based International Centre For Alcohol Policies also funded by the alcohol industry, as are several of the other authors. The book focuses on undermining the control of alcohol at the population level and prefers an approach which targets only those who are engaged in problem drinking behaviour.