Alcoholism as a medical and socio-legal problem and ways to solve it

Introduction: Almost 3.3 million people die from alcohol abuse each year worldwide accounting for almost 5% of all deaths. In 20% of cases alcohol is a cause of death in traffic accidents with more than 250 million men and women suffering from health disorders due to alcohol consumption and the prospects for improving this situation are disappointing [1]. Alcohol abuse has a negative impact not only on the health of the population, but also on public relations in general. It is about causing physical, moral and material harm to the "healthy" part of the population, as well as financial burden related to social payments. Addressing and reducing the problem of alcoholism requires a coherent government policy. The aim: To summarize the modern progressive experience of preventing alcoholism and to identify the most promising directions of this phenomenon limitation by medical and socio-legal measures.

Materials and methods: We've used statistics of the World Health Organization, open source analytical information, including law enforcement agencies of Ukraine and other countries data. Analyzes of scientific publications on the impact of alcohol on public health and the social and legal consequences of alcoholism in the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), MEDLINE, PubMed systematic, using dialectical, comparative, general, and statistical methods of scientific research.

Conclusions: Alcoholism is a social problem, so its roots must be sought not only in the imperfection of medical therapies for the treatment of patients, but above all in the inefficiency of state social policy and the inconsistency of legislation. The most effective are the following governmental policies: reducing the number of places of sale of alcohol; increasing of prices on alcoholic beverages; regulation of sale hours of alcoholic beverages; increasing the age of alcohol purchase allowance. These policies will be effective, given the widespread promotion of healthy lifestyles, intolerance of excessive alcohol consumption, compliance with the laws entrusted to the entities in charge of controlling functions, the inevitability of liability for violations of anti-alcohol legislation in the form of fines and revocation of licenses.