Witness for the body politic: Alcohol as challenge for democratic politics and policy

This presentation will use our nation's long history of encounter with alcohol to demonstrate four great challenges for democratic politics and policy. a. Democracy as a verb. A major challenge of our democracy is whether or how well we use inquiry and social criticism to transform and renew democratic life. The public health perspective is above all a doctrine of social criticism, a way of re-thinking the role of alcohol in society. Much depends on whether our democracy offers those “disinterested institutions” like media and academic research that enable us to explore and re-examine alcohol policy. b. Democracy as prevention, or democracy as social justice and the common good. The public health perspective usually leads to demands for new interests and legislation in health, interests in alcohol policy and the common good. The critical test for our democracy is whether we will apply inquiry's insights for the formation of new policies that reform the conditions of the common life for alcohol and other drugs. c. Democracy as certainty, or the challenge that policy should rest on prior truths about the individual, the market, or traditional values that precludes debate, research, and empirical evidence. d. Democracy and the individual. Our democracy is highly individualistic. The challenge for public health is to witness for the body politic, the democratic community by demonstrating that more health for more individuals depends on developing that system of community interests on which health for all depends.