One of the problems facing those concerned with the development of policies and legislation on alcohol issues is the sheer volume of research and publications on this subject. In addition, these works span a variety of disciplines, and are often couched in academic jargon which may be incomprehensible to non-specialists.
In this section, we therefore provide a brief, bullet-point summary of the key findings and significant generalisations that can be drawn from our survey of the literature on social and cultural aspects of alcohol. Subsequent sections provide more detailed examination of some of these findings, but the generalisations presented in this summary can be regarded as relatively uncontroversial ‘sociocultural facts’ about drinking, many of which have been consistent features of similar literature-reviews and summaries for over a decade (Douglas, 1987; Pittman and White, 1991; Heath, 1998).