Jim Walker

I am posting this information only to disseminate factual information about the risks, behavioral changes, and responsibilities related to serving and consumption of alcohol.

Review these posts as “food for thought”.

Alcohol use and Behavior.

J Pers Soc Psychol. 1985 Jan;48(1):18-34Alcohol and social behavior I: The psychology of drunken excess.Steele CM, Southwick L.
Drinking alcohol clearly has important effect on social behaviors, such as increasing aggression, self-disclosure, sexual adventuresomeness, and so on. Research has shown that these effects can stem from beliefs we hold about alcohol effects. Less is known about how alcohol itself affects these behaviors. A cognitive explanation, that alcohol impairs the information processing needed to inhibit response impulses--the abilities to foresee negative consequences of the response, to recall inhibiting standards, and so on--has begun to emerge. We hypothesize that alcohol impairment will make a social response more extreme or excessive when the response is pressured by both inhibiting and instigating cues--in our terms, when it is under inhibitory response conflict. In that case, alcohol's damage to inhibitory processing allows instigating pressures more sway over the response, increasing its extremeness. In the present meta-analysis, each published test of alcohol's effect on a so
cial, or socially significant behavior was rated (validated against independent judges) as to whether it was under high or low inhibitory conflict. Over low-conflict tests, intoxicated subjects behaved only a tenth of a standard deviation more extremely than their sober controls, whereas over high-conflict tests they were a full standard deviation more extreme. The effect of conflict increased with alcohol dosage, was shown not to be mediated by drinking expectancies, and generalized with few exceptions across the 34 studies and 12 social behaviors included in this analysis.

Alcohol sales and risk of serious assault.Ray JG, Moineddin R, Bell CM, Thiruchelvam D, Creatore MI, Gozdyra P, Cusimano M, Redelmeier DA.Department of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. rayj@smh.toronto.on.ca
BACKGROUND: Alcohol is a contributing cause of unintentional injuries, such as motor vehicle crashes. Prior research on the association between alcohol use and violent injury was limited to survey-based data, and the inclusion of cases from a single trauma centre, without adequate controls. Beyond these limitations was the inability of prior researchers to comprehensively capture most alcohol sales. In Ontario, most alcohol is sold through retail outlets run by the provincial government, and hospitals are financed under a provincial health care system. We assessed the risk of being hospitalized due to assault in association with retail alcohol sales across Ontario. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We performed a population-based case-crossover analysis of all persons aged 13 years and older hospitalized for assault in Ontario from 1 April 2002 to 1 December 2004. On the day prior to each assault case's hospitalization, the volume of alcohol sold at the store in closest proximity to the
victim's home was compared to the volume of alcohol sold at the same store 7 d earlier. Conditional logistic regression analysis was used to determine the associated relative risk (RR) of assault per 1,000 l higher daily sales of alcohol. Of the 3,212 persons admitted to hospital for assault, nearly 25% were between the ages of 13 and 20 y, and 83% were male. A total of 1,150 assaults (36%) involved the use of a sharp or blunt weapon, and 1,532 (48%) arose during an unarmed brawl or fight. For every 1,000 l more of alcohol sold per store per day, the relative risk of being hospitalized for assault was 1.13 (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.02-1.26). The risk was accentuated for males (1.18, 95% CI 1.05-1.33), youth aged 13 to 20 y (1.21, 95% CI 0.99-1.46), and those in urban areas (1.19, 95% CI 1.06-1.35). CONCLUSIONS: The risk of being a victim of serious assault increases with alcohol sales, especially among young urban men. Akin to reducing the risk of driving while impaire
d, consideration should be given to novel methods of preventing alcohol-related violence.