Marcus Grant

Marcus Grant is president of the International Centre For Alcohol Policies, 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) ^[2], commonly known as the pink book, and 'Alcohol Policy and the Public Good' (Edwards et al., 1992) ^[3] 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.

One review of Grant's work wonders why two groups of authors reviewing essentially the same literature on policies aimed at reducing alcohol-related harm reach diametrically opposite conclusions regarding the effectiveness of and need for population-level alcohol control measures. Others too have questioned the links with indusrty, "could it be an indication that financial support from the alcohol industry influences scientific debate in a way that protects its commercial interests? Should the alcohol industry be tarred with the same brush as the tobacco industry, and the "... tainted relationship between science and the tobacco industry, where trust seems to have virtually ‘disappeared’" (Babor et al., 1996)? Should the alcohol industry be consigned to ‘pariah status' as Edwards (1998) has suggested? The alcohol industry and scientists sponsored by it have competing interests in the interpretation of public health research evidence on alcohol."

Notes

1. ^ Colin Drummond,Alcohol and Alcoholism Vol. 35, No. 2, pp. 217-218, 2000 Review of Drinking Patterns and their Consequences
2. ^ Bruun, K., Edwards, G., Lumio, M. et al. (1975) Alcohol Control Policies in Public Health Perspective. Finnish Foundation for Alcohol Studies, Helsinki.
3. ^ Edwards, G., Anderson, P., Babor, T. F. et al. (1992) Alcohol Policy and the Public Good. Oxford University Press, New York.

References & Further Reading

1. Marcus Grant and Jorge Litvak, (1999) Drinking Patterns & Their Consequences. Taylor & Francis, Washington
2. Babor, T. F., Edwards, G. and Stockwell, T. (1996) Science and the drinks industry: cause for concern. Addiction 91, 5–9.[ISI][Medline]
3. Edwards, G. (1998) If the drinks industry does not clean up its act, pariah status is inevitable. British Medical Journal 317, 336.[ISI][Medline]
4. Holder, H. D. and Edwards, G. (eds) (1995) Alcohol and Public Policy: Evidence and Issues. Oxford University Press, New York.