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Background and Aims There is a growing literature using event‐level methods to estimate associations between contextual characteristics of drinking occasions, consumption levels, and acute harms. This literature spans many research traditions and has not been brought together as a whole. This mapping review aimed to identify and describe the theoretical approaches to conceptualising drinking occasions, study designs, predictors, and outcome measures used in existing research with a view to identifying dominant approaches, research gaps and areas for further synthesis. Methods Eligible papers studied adults’ drinking occasions using quantitative event‐level methods and considered one or more contextual characteristics (e.g. venue, timing, or company) and at least one event‐level consumption or acute alcohol‐related harm outcome. We systematically searched Ovid MEDLINE, PsycInfo, and the Web of Science Social Sciences Citation Index, extracting data on studies’ theoretical approach, data collection methods, settings, populations, drinking occasion characteristics, and outcome measures. Results Searches identified 278 eligible papers (from 1975 to 2019), predominantly published after 2010 (n=181; 65.1%). Most papers reported research conducted in the United States (n=170; 61.2%) and half used student participants (n=133; 47.8%). Papers typically lacked a stated theoretical approach (n=203; 73.0%). Consistent with this, only 53 (19.1%) papers studied three or more occasion characteristics and most used methods that assume occasion characteristics do not change during an occasion (n=189; 68.0%). The most common outcome type considered was consumption (n=224; 80.6%) and only a few papers studied specific acute harm outcomes such as unprotected sex (n=24; 8.6%), drink driving (n=14; 5.0%) or sexual violence (n=9; 3.2%). Conclusions Studies from 1975 to 2019 using event‐level methods to estimate associations between contextual characteristics of drinking occasions, consumption levels, and acute harms were largely focused on students and consumption outcomes and most have considered a limited range of contextual characteristics.

To propose a hierarchy of methodological criteria to consider when determining whether a study provides sufficient information to answer the question of whether e-cigarettes can facilitate cigarette smoking cessation or reduction.A PubMed search to 1 February 2017 was conducted of all studies related to e-cigarettes and smoking cessation or reduction.Australia, Europe, Iran, Korea, New Zealand and the United States.91 articles.Coders organized studies according to six proposed methodological criteria: (1) examines outcome of interest (cigarette abstinence or reduction), (2) assesses e-cigarette use for cessation as exposure of interest, (3) employs appropriate control/comparison groups, (4) ensures that measurement of exposure precedes the outcome, (5) evaluates dose and duration of the exposure and (6) evaluates the type and quality of the e-cigarette used.Twenty-four papers did not examine the outcomes of interest. Forty did not assess the specific reason for e-cigarette use as an exposure of interest. Twenty papers did not employ prospective study designs with appropriate comparison groups. The few observational studies meeting some of the criteria (duration, type, use for cessation) triangulated with findings from three randomized trials to suggest that e-cigarettes can help adult smokers quit or reduce cigarette smoking.Only a small proportion of studies seeking to address the effect of e-cigarettes on smoking cessation or reduction meet a set of proposed quality standards. Those that do are consistent with randomized controlled trial evidence in suggesting that e-cigarettes can help with smoking cessation or reduction.

Aims Since the publication of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders fourth edition (DSM-IV), many studies have addressed substance use disorders (SUD) in adolescents. Based on that adolescent literature, this paper suggests further research to help guide decisions about revising for DSM-V the SUD criteria in DSM-IV. Method The author has reviewed the ‘Substance Related Disorders’ section of DSM-IV-TR, recalled his experience in helping to draft that section, accessed relevant articles in PubMed and reviewed his own extensive file of literature citations. Results This paper suggests six questions for adolescent research to help guide the framers of DSM-V’s ‘Substance Related Disorders’ section: (a) DSM-IV did not provide a diagnosis of cannabis withdrawal; should DSM-V continue that position? (b) Should SUD be included or referenced among ‘Disorders Usually First Diagnosed in Infancy, Childhood, or Adolescence’? (c) Can inter-rater reliability of the substance abuse (SA) criteria be improved with altered example situations, text descriptions or phrasing of the current criteria? (d) Between ages 14 and 18 years is earlier onset of SUD a severity marker that could be incorporated into DSM-V as a predictor of worse course? (e) In DSM-V could a phenotypic descriptor of pathological multi-substance involvement document severity and predict course of SUD? (f) Could clinicians and patients benefit from DSM-V-related postpublication procedures for classifying emerging new drugs into DSM-V’s categories? Conclusion Without substantive changes in SA or substance dependence diagnostic criteria, research may improve the usefulness of those criteria for adolescents.

Aims paper describes the background to the establishment of the Substance Use Disorders Workgroup, which was charged with developing the research agenda for the development of the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). It summarizes 18 articles that were commissioned to inform that process. Methods A preliminary list of research topics, developed at the DSM-V Launch Conference in 2004, led to the identification of subjects that were subject to formal presentations and detailed discussion at the Substance Use Disorders Conference in February 2005. Results The 18 articles presented in this supplement examine: (1) categorical versus dimensional diagnoses; (2) the neurobiological basis of substance use disorders; (3) social and cultural perspectives; (4) the crosswalk between DSM-IV and the International Classification of Diseases Tenth Revision (ICD-10); (5) comorbidity of substance use disorders and mental health disorders; (6) subtypes of disorders; (7) issues in adolescence; (8) substance-specific criteria; (9) the place of non-substance addictive disorders; and (10) the available research resources. Conclusions In the final paper a broadly based research agenda for the development of diagnostic concepts and criteria for substance use disorders is presented.

Recent changes in alcohol availability and access in the United States are reviewed and the role public policy research played in such changes are discussed. The paper finds that there are two concurrent trends, i.e. increased alcohol availability through changes in wine and spirits structural availability, lower prices and increased outlet densities, and decreased availability and access through higher minimum drinking ages, server intervention and training, server liability, low- and no-alcohol beverages, and warning labels on alcohol containers. This paper discusses these trends and the implications for policy development to which research is an input.

Background and aims The prevailing 'evidence-based policy' paradigm emphasizes a technical-rational relationship between alcohol and drug research evidence and subsequent policy action. However, policy process theories do not start with this premise, and hence provide an opportunity to consider anew the ways in which evidence, research and other types of knowledge impact upon policy. This paper presents a case study, the police deployment of drug detection dogs, to highlight how two prominent policy theories [the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) and the Multiple Streams (MS) approach] explicate the relationship between evidence and policy. Methods The two theories were interrogated with reference to their descriptions and framings of evidence, research and other types of knowledge. The case study methodology was employed to extract data concerned with evidence and other types of knowledge from a previous detailed historical account and analysis of drug detection dogs in one Australian state (New South Wales). Different types of knowledge employed across the case study were identified and coded, and then analysed with reference to each theory. A detailed analysis of one key 'evidence event' within the case study was also undertaken. Results Five types of knowledge were apparent in the case study: quantitative program data; practitioner knowledge; legal knowledge; academic research; and lay knowledge. The ACF highlights how these various types of knowledge are only influential inasmuch as they provide the opportunity to alter the beliefs of decision-makers. The MS highlights how multiple types of knowledge may or may not form part of the strategy of policy entrepreneurs to forge the confluence of problems, solutions and politics. Conclusions Neither the Advocacy Coalition Framework nor the Multiple Streams approach presents an uncomplicated linear relationship between evidence and policy action, nor do they preference any one type of knowledge. The implications for research and practice include the contestation of evidence through beliefs (Advocacy Coalition Framework), the importance of venues for debate (Advocacy Coalition Framework), the way in which data and indicators are transformed into problem specification (Multiple Streams) and the importance of the policy ('alternatives') stream (Multiple Streams).

Background Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is a world-wide recovery mutual-help organization that continues to arouse controversy. In large part, concerns persist because of AA's ostensibly quasi-religious/spiritual orientation and emphasis. In 1990 the United States’ Institute of Medicine called for more studies on AA's effectiveness and its mechanisms of behavior change (MOBC) stimulating a flurry of federally funded research. This paper reviews the religious/spiritual origins of AA and its program and contrasts its theory with findings from this latest research. Method Literature review, summary and synthesis of studies examining AA's MOBC. Results While AA's original main text (‘the Big Book’, 1939) purports that recovery is achieved through quasi-religious/spiritual means (‘spiritual awakening’), findings from studies on MOBC suggest this may be true only for a minority of participants with high addiction severity. AA's beneficial effects seem to be carried predominantly by social, cognitive and affective mechanisms. These mechanisms are more aligned with the experiences reported by AA's own larger and more diverse membership as detailed in its later social, cognitive and behaviorally oriented publications (e.g. Living Sober, 1975) written when AA membership numbered more than a million men and women. Conclusions Alcoholics Anonymous appears to be an effective clinical and public health ally that aids addiction recovery through its ability to mobilize therapeutic mechanisms similar to those mobilized in formal treatment, but is able to do this for free over the long term in the communities in which people live.

This paper starts with the basic assumption that together with its dysfunctional consequences illicit drug usage by the young has led to some positive societal developments. This paper attempts to identify and describe these positive developments. Accordingly there seems to be: (1) less glorification of medication in general; (2) more adequate controls in the realm of drug production, distribution and research; (3) an awareness of inconsistencies, in the existent drug laws, their enforcement, both of which resulted in attempts at making both the existing laws and their enforcement less arbitrary.

Aims This paper presents examples to illustrate the utility and limitations in the use of epidemiology in alcohol research and discusses some promising new directions. Methods Review of literature, concentrating on epidemiological alcohol research with relevance to public health. Findings and conclusion Epidemiology offers tools for assessment of causes and effects of alcohol consumption as well as the effects of efforts to prevent alcohol consumption and its consequences. Epidemiological studies have made significant contributions to alcohol research with respect to public health and public policy. Fixed-effects modelling, difference-in-differences estimation and integrated qualitative and epidemiological methods are promising but underused methods in epidemiological studies. Many epidemiological studies have limited transferability of knowledge to other cultures and jurisdictions.

Background Social pressures are often an integral part of the process of seeking addiction treatment. However, scientists have not developed conclusive evidence on the processes, benefits and limitations of using legal, formal and informal social control tactics to inform policy makers, service providers and the public. This paper characterizes barriers to a robust interdisciplinary analysis of social control and coercion in addiction treatment and provides directions for future research. Approach Conceptual analysis and review of key studies and trends in the area are used to describe eight implicit assumptions underlying policy, practice and scholarship on this topic. Findings Many policies, programmes and researchers are guided by a simplistic behaviourist and health-service perspective on social controls that (a) overemphasizes the use of criminal justice systems to compel individuals into treatment and (b) fails to take into account provider, patient and public views. Conclusions Policies and programmes that expand addiction treatment options deserve support. However, drawing a firm distinction between social controls (objective use of social pressure) and coercion (client perceptions and decision-making processes) supports a parallel position that rejects treatment policies, programmes, and associated practices that create client perceptions of coercion.

This paper addresses the conflict between the ethical and legal responsibilities of researchers engaged in illicit drug use research. Fundamentally, the primary ethical responsibility is to protect research subjects from any harm which may come to them as a consequence of having taken part in the research. Legal responsibilities, however, might lie in assisting police with their enquiries into the conduct of an individual who is a research subject, and allowing research data to be searched and possibly used in evidence against the individual. There is no Western Australian legislation which protects research, nor Australian legislation which can be applied to most studies. Using two case studies, we give examples of the conflict and suggest that legislation may be the most effective way to overcome it. However, we also raise a number of issues which would need to be considered before solutions are enacted.

The interaction of Finnish social alcohol research and alcohol policy will be discussed in this paper. We will examine the history of alcohol research, focusing on the extent that problems related to alcohol policy have been covered in research. We also deliberate upon such questions as to what extent changes in alcohol policy can be linked to the findings of research. Researchers began their work in the 1950s, hoping to find a solution to the problems met in alcohol policy. In the 1960s the era of alcohol policy-centred projects was followed by an era which aimed to increase the factual knowledge of alcohol not necessarily tied to alcohol policy questions. After 1969 alcohol policy questions gained renewed interest. Alcohol research has not directly caused many new measures, but it has influenced the public and private discussion about alcohol policy. Producing results and research reports has been an important way to affect both public discussions and policy making. However, participating in the decision making processes in its different stages has been an even more crucial way to affect alcohol policy. Particularly in the 1970s, the ideas and views presented in studies had fairly immediate and direct repercussions on both alcohol policy and practical measures.

The 1988 Surgeon General's report (US DHHS, 1988) argued that smoking should be considered an addiction because it displays the features common to all addictive disorders, which were, most importantly, highly controlled or compulsive use of a psychoactive substance. Furthermore, urges to smoke were identified as directly responsible for this pattern of drug use. Although it is commonly asserted that urges are central to the addictive process, relatively little research has been devoted to this issue and the evidence that is available provides little support for the assumption. This paper argues that the role of urges in addictive smoking should receive greater attention from smoking researchers and offers several suggestions for overcoming the methodological and theoretical limitations of previous research on smoking urges.

Summary The increasing use of media advertisements to recruit subjects in alcohol treatment research has raised concerns about the comparability of such solicited subjects and subjects drawn from more traditional clinic populations. This paper, based on a study that involved both solicited and clinic subjects, identifies differences between the two types of subjects in terms of sociodemographic variables; pre-treatment drinking and marital adjustment; several dimensions of ‘self-definition’ and three outcome measures. These findings suggest that there may be significant differences between solicited and clinic subjects and that these differences should be taken into account in the design of studies utilizing solicited subjects in order to determine the generalizability of the results.