Mind the gap! Gender differences in alcohol consumption among Swedish ninth graders 1989-2021

INTRODUCTION

To examine gender differences in drinking habits among Swedish ninth graders over the period 1989-2021.

METHODS

Annual school surveys with nationally representative samples of ninth-grade students in Sweden covering the period 1989-2021, total sample of 180,538 students. Drinking habits were measured with self-reports of frequency and quantity of use and frequency of heavy episodic drinking. Differences between genders were compared annually and differences were tested using logistic and ordinary least square regression models with cluster robust standard errors.

RESULTS

Small gender differences in the prevalence of alcohol use during the first part of the study period were followed by an increasing gap over the past decade with girls being more likely to drink alcohol than boys. Boys consumed larger amounts of alcohol than girls during the first three decades of the studied period but no gender differences were found in later years. Binge drinking was more prevalent among boys during 1989 to 2000 but no systematic gender difference was found during the past 15 years.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

There used to be clear gender differences in drinking habits among ninth graders in Sweden with boys drinking more than girls. This gap has narrowed over the past three decades and among contemporary adolescents, no gender differences are found neither in binge drinking nor volume of drinking and the prevalence of drinking is even higher among girls.

Does the decline in Swedish adolescent drinking persist into early adulthood?

BACKGROUND AND AIMS

Sweden has experienced a substantial decrease in adolescent drinking over the past decades. Whether the reduction persists into early adulthood remains unclear. Using survey data, the present study aimed to determine whether reductions in indicators of alcohol use observed among adolescents remain in early adulthood and whether changes in alcohol intake are consistent among light/moderate and heavy drinkers.

DESIGN

Data from the Swedish monthly Alcohol Monitoring Survey (2001-20) were used to construct five 5-year birth cohorts (1978-82, 1983-87, 1988-92, 1993-97 and 1998-2002).

SETTING

Sweden.

PARTICIPANTS

A total of n = 52 847 respondents (48% females) aged 16 and 30 years were included in this study.

MEASUREMENTS

For both males and females, temporal changes in the prevalence of any drinking, the prevalence of heavy episodic drinking (HED) and total alcohol intake in the past 30 days in centilitres were analysed.

FINDINGS

The prevalence of any drinking in more recent cohorts remained low until young people came into their early (females) and mid- (males) 20s. Male cohorts differed in the prevalence of HED across age, with the later cohorts showing lower odds than earlier cohorts (odds ratios between 0.54 and 0.66). Among females, no systematic differences between cohorts across age could be observed. Later male birth cohorts in light/moderate drinkers had lower alcohol intake than earlier cohorts (correlation coefficients between -0.09 and -0.54). No statistically significant cohort effects were found for male heavy drinkers. Although differences in alcohol intake among females diminished as age increased, the cohorts did not differ systematically in their level of alcohol intake.

CONCLUSIONS

In Sweden, the reduced uptake of drinking in adolescents appears to fade as people move into adulthood. Observed reductions in alcohol intake among light and moderate drinkers appear to persist into adulthood. More recent male cohorts show a lower prevalence rate of heavy episodic drinking.

How Covid-19 restrictions affected young people's well-being and drinking practices: Analyzing interviews with a socio-material approach

BACKGROUND

The Covid-19 restrictions - as they made young people's practices in their everyday life visible for reflection and reformation - provide a productive opportunity to study how changing conditions affected young people's well-being and drinking practices.

METHODS

The data is based on qualitative interviews with 18- to 24-year-old Swedes (n=33) collected in the Autumn 2021. By drawing on the socio-material approach, the paper traces actants, assemblages and trajectories that moved the participants towards increased or decreased well-being during the lockdown.

RESULTS

The Covid-19 restrictions made the participants reorganize their everyday life practices emphatically around the home and communication technologies. The restrictions gave rise to both worsened and improved well-being trajectories. In the worsened well-being trajectories, the pandemic restrictions moved the participants towards loneliness, loss of routines, passivity, physical barriers, self-centered thoughts, negative effects of digital technology, sleep deficit, identity crisis, anxiety, depression, and stress. In the improved well-being trajectories, the Covid-19 restrictions brought about freedom to study from a distance, more time for significant others, oneself and for one's own hobbies, new productive practices at home and a better understanding of what kind of person one is. Both worsened and improved well-being trajectories were related to the aim to perform well, and in them drinking practices either diminished or increased the participants' capacities and competencies for well-being.

CONCLUSIONS

The results suggest that material domestic spaces, communication technologies and performance are important actants both for alcohol consumption and well-being among young people. These actants may increase or decrease young people's drinking and well-being depending on what kinds of relations become assembled.

"There's a lot of stereotypes going on": A cross-national qualitative analysis of the place of gender in declining youth drinking

INTRODUCTION

Significant declines in drinking among young people have been recorded in many high-income countries over the past 20 years. This analysis explored the role of gender - which we interpret as socially constructed and relational - to provide insight into whether and how gender might be implicated in declining youth drinking.

METHODS

Interview data from four independent qualitative studies from Australia, Denmark, Sweden and the UK (n=194; participants aged 15-19 years) were analysed by researchers in each country following agreement about analytical focus. Findings were collated by the lead author in a process of 'qualitative synthesis' which involved successive rounds of data synthesis and feedback from the broader research team.

FINDINGS

Our analysis raised two notable points in relation to the role of gender in declining youth drinking. The first concerned the consistency and vehemence across three of the countries at which drinkers and states of intoxication were pejoratively described in gendered terms (e.g., bitchy, sleazy). The second related to the opportunities non- and light-drinking offered for expressing alternate and desirable configurations of femininities and masculinities.

CONCLUSIONS

We identified an intolerance towards regressive constructions of gender that emphasise weakness for women and strength for men and a valorisation of gendered expressions of maturity through controlled drinking. Though subtle differences in gendered drinking practices between and within countries were observed, our findings offer insight into how young people's enactions of gender are embedded in, and evolve alongside, these large declines in youth drinking.

Performing normality in working life among heavy substance users

Aim: Work is an important part of most people's everyday lives and well-being. Substance use by employees is associated with several negative consequences, such as absence from work and poor work performance. The study examines the strategies through which people who have problems with substance use produce a “normal” self and avoid becoming stigmatised in the workplace. Methods: The study uses data from in-depth unstructured life story interviews, which were conducted over phone with 13 people. The participants had developed various problematic heavy substance use habits. The interviews were analysed by applying interactional analysis and by using Goffman's concepts of “normality”, “embarrassment”, “face-work”, “stigma” and “performance”. Results: The analysis identified multiple strategies the participants used to produce normality and to avoid embarrassment and stigmatisation at work. These include skilful use of drugs in order not to show withdrawal symptoms, various ways of hiding their heavy substance use, frequent change of jobs, the maintenance of a clean and professional look, and attributing the absence from work to mental or physical illness. Moreover, the participants strategically avoided social contacts in which embarrassing situations could arise. When this was not possible, they manipulated their corporeal looks by hiding such kinds of bodily marks that would connote abnormality. Conclusion: The analysis points out that maintaining normality at work does not only refer to the efforts of trying to hide the effects of the drugs on behaviours and the body. It also reveals that the participants used substances to be able to perform energetically their work tasks, and in this way present themselves as normal workers. This ambivalence in performing normality makes the work life of people who use substances challenging.

Trends in alcohol consumption among adolescents in Europe: Do changes occur in concert?

OBJECTIVE

The present paper extends the scope of testing Skog's theory on the 'collectivity of drinking culture' to adolescent alcohol use in 26 European countries. The aim was to 1) examine whether changes in adolescent alcohol use are consistent across different consumption levels, and 2) explore whether trends in heavy and light drinkers diverged or converged.

METHOD

Data came from six waves of the cross-sectional European School Survey Project on Alcohol and other Drugs (ESPAD) between 1999 and 2019. The sample consisted of n = 452,935 students aged 15-16 years. Trends in alcohol volume across consumption levels including abstainers were estimated by quantile regression models (50th, 80th, 90th and 95th percentile). Countries were classified according to trends showing (soft/hard) collectivity or (soft/hard) polarisation. Trends in heavy drinkers were compared with the population trend.

RESULTS

Trends in alcohol consumption at different levels across 26 European countries in the period 1999-2019 were not homogeneous. Collective changes were found in 15 (14 soft/1 hard), and polarised trends in 11 countries (5 soft/6 hard). Collectivity was generally associated with a declining trend. In 18 countries, trends in heavy and light drinkers diverged.

CONCLUSION

Accepting some variation in the strength of changes across consumption levels, changes in many European countries occurred in the same direction. Yet, diverging trends at different consumption levels in most countries indicate a less beneficial change in heavy compared with light drinkers, implying that in addition to universal population-level strategies, intervention strategies targeting specific risk groups are needed to prevent alcohol-related harm.

Negotiating Emerging Adulthood With Master and Counter Narratives: Alcohol-Related Identity Trajectories Among Emerging Adults in Performance-Oriented Neoliberal Society

This study analyzes how emerging adults negotiate their relation to alcohol in the context of declining youth drinking and how this relationship changes over time. The sample consists of longitudinal qualitative interview data ( N = 28) with 9 boys and 19 girls aged 15 to 21. The participants were recruited through schools, social media and non-governmental organizations from mainly the Stockholm region and smaller towns in central Sweden to reach a heterogeneous sample in terms of sociodemographic factors and drinking practices. We interviewed the participants in-depth three times between 2017 and 2019. Thematic coding of the whole data with NVivo helped us select four cases for more detailed analysis, as they represented the typical trajectories and showed the variation in the material. We used the master narrative framework and Bamberg’s narrative positioning analysis to examine the data. The analysis demonstrates what kinds of narrative alignments in identity development encourage heavy drinking, moderate alcohol consumption, and fuel abstinence. The results suggest that the decline in youth drinking is produced by a co-effect of multiple master narratives that intersect and guide the identity development away from heavy drinking.

Has beverage composition of alcohol consumption in Sweden changed over time? An age-period-cohort analysis

INTRODUCTION

In recent years, beverage composition of total alcohol consumption has changed substantially in Sweden. As beverage choice is strongly associated with drinking practices, our paper aims to analyse trends in beverage composition of alcohol consumption by age, period and cohort.

METHODS

Age-period-cohort (APC) analysis was conducted using monthly data from the Swedish Alcohol Monitoring Survey (2003-2018). The sample consisted of n = 260 633 respondents aged 16-80 years. APC analysis was conducted on drinkers only (n = 193 954; 96 211 males, 97 743 females). Beverage composition was defined as the beverage-specific proportion of total intake in litre ethanol. Fractional multinomial logit regression was applied to estimate the independent effects of age, period and cohort on trends in beverage composition.

RESULTS

Regression models revealed statistically significant effects of age on all beverages except for medium-strength beer and spirits in males. Controlling for age and cohort, decreasing trends were found over time for medium-strength beer and spirits. The proportion of regular beer increased statistically significantly in males and the proportion of wine in females, whereas the trends for the opposite sex remained stable in each case. Predictions for cohorts showed statistically significant decreasing trends for medium-strength beer in males, lower proportions for regular beer and higher proportions for spirits in the youngest cohorts.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

The increasing proportion of wine drinking, which is associated with less risky drinking practices, may decrease alcohol-related morbidity and mortality. Increasing proportions of spirits in the youngest cohorts raises concerns of a possible revival in spirits consumption among the youngest.

Similar countries, similar factors? Studying the decline of heavy episodic drinking in adolescents in Finland, Norway and Sweden

AIM

To (i) examine several factors associated with trends in heavy episodic drinking (HED) in Finland, Norway and Sweden, (ii) investigate similarities in these associations across the countries and (iii) analyse the contribution of these factors to the trend in HED and the differences across the countries.

DESIGN AND SETTING

Observational study using five waves of the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD) from Finland, Norway and Sweden between 1999 and 2015.

PARTICIPANTS

A total of 18 128 male and 19 121 female 15- to 16-year-old students.

MEASUREMENTS

Monthly HED, perceived access to alcohol, truancy, parental control, leisure time activities and daily smoking. The Cochran-Armitage test was used to examine linear time trends in HED. Logit regression models using the Karlson-Holm-Breen (KHB) method were fitted for each country separately, including all the independent variables together with time and adjusted for family status, parental education and gender.

FINDINGS

In Finland, Norway and Sweden, perceived access to alcohol, truancy and daily smoking decreased significantly between 1999 and 2015 whereas risk perceptions, parental control and participation in sports increased in the same period. The confounding percentage of all the independent variables related to the trend in HED was 48.8%, 68.9% and 36.7% for Finland, Norway and Sweden, respectively. Decline in daily smoking (P < 0.001) and perceived access to alcohol (P < 0.001) were positively and increase in parental control (P < 0.001) negatively associated with the decline in HED in all three countries. Changes in truancy, going out with friends, and engaging in sports and other hobbies had little or no impact on the decline in HED or displayed no consistent results across the countries.

CONCLUSIONS

The decline in adolescent heavy episodic drinking in Finland, Norway and Sweden between 1999 and 2015 appears to be associated with a decline in adolescent daily smoking and perceived access to alcohol and an increase in parental control.

The gendered relationship with drunkenness among different generations in Mediterranean and Nordic countries

The study adopts a qualitative comparative approach to better understand how different dimensions affect social norms regulating alcohol consumption. Female and male attitudes towards drunkenness were analysed on the basis of data from 27 focus groups involving a total of 166 participants from Italy, Finland and Sweden, grouped by age cohort (17–20 and 50–65 years) and educational level. Results suggest that gendered drinking norms may be affected more by the drinking culture than by the degree of gender equality, thus providing a possible explanation of why gender differences in drinking are not always consistent with broader gender inequalities.

Online gambling venues as relational actors in addiction: Applying the actor-network approach to life stories of online gamblers

BACKGROUND

With the emerging technologies of the Internet and smartphones during the last decades, the gambling environment has undergone a massive transformation. In Sweden, and Europe in general, online gambling has more than doubled since 2007.

METHOD

The paper studies online gambling venues (OGVs) as relational actors of addiction. By drawing on the actor-network theory (ANT) and assemblage thinking, we examine how OGVs, as actors in specific networks of attachment, enable the development of gambling addiction and facilitate its continuation. The data consists of life story interviews with 34 online gamblers.

RESULTS

Online gambling venues extend the scope of gambling opportunities through space, providing an easy portable 24-hours-a-day access to gambling online and on smartphones. This increases the spatial mobility of gambling to diverse contexts. By linking gambling to more unpredictably evolving patterns of relations, online gambling venues also increase gambling's temporal mobility to intrude in the habitual trajectories of everyday life. By enhancing the gambling mobility through space and time, OGVs simultaneously extend the scope of situations in which gambling may transform from a controlled activity into an addiction. It is then that the actor-networks of gambling infiltrate in the actor-networks of work, domestic life and leisure, and start to feed processes where they are translated to serve the interests of gambling.

CONCLUSION

By giving us tools to challenge simplistic and taken-for-granted explanations of gambling addiction and by allowing us to grasp the flux and changing nature of addiction as a relational pattern of heterogeneous contextual attachments, the actor-network theory can help us to understand the complexity and multiplicity of gambling problems. The knowledge on what kinds of contextual attachments in diverse actor-networks enable harmful gambling and sustain unhealthy relations helps practitioners to focus treatment interventions especially on these contextual linkages and their configurations.

'Social health', 'physical health', and well-being: Analysing with bourdieusian concepts the interplay between the practices of heavy drinking and exercise among young people

BACKGROUND

The article examines the interplay between the practices of heavy drinking and exercise among young people. The comparison helps to clarify why young people are currently drinking less than earlier and how the health-related discourses and activities are modifying young people's heavy drinking practices.

METHODS

The data is based on interviews (n = 56) in Sweden among 15-17-year-olds and 18-19-year-olds. By drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of habitus, field, and capital, we examine what kinds of resources young people accumulate in the fields of heavy drinking and exercise, how these resources carry symbolic value for distinction, and what kind of health-related habitus they imply.

RESULTS

The analysis shows that young people's practices in the social spaces of intoxication and exercise are patterned around the 'social health' and 'physical health' approaches and shaped by gendered binaries of masculine dominance. The 'physical health' approach values capable, high-performative, and attractive bodies, whereas the 'social health' approach is oriented towards accumulating social capital. The analysis demonstrates that these approaches affect the interviewees' everyday life practices so that the 'physical health' approach has more power over the 'social health' approach in transforming them.

CONCLUSION

As the 'physical health' approach appears to modify young people's practices of drinking to be less oriented to intoxication or away from drinking, this may partly explain why young people are drinking less today than earlier. Compared to drinking, the physical health-related social spaces also seem to provide more powerful arenas within which to bolster one's masculine and feminine habitus. This further suggests that intoxication may have lost its symbolic power among young people as a cool activity signalling autonomy, maturity, and transgression of norms.

Combining Alcohol with Benzodiazepines or Psychostimulants. Metaphoric Meanings and the Concept of Control in the Online Talk of Polydrug Use

The co-administration of different substances is a widespread practice in the context of hard drug use. Among others, alcohol combined with certain substances produces potentially dangerous interactions. This article explores how people who combine alcohol with benzodiazepines or psychostimulants perceive these practices and how they share their perceptions in Finnish and Swedish online discussions. This is carried out by analyzing discussants' use of metaphoric expressions. We found that the metaphors given to the use of these substance combinations reflect their pharmacological characteristics. Through that, the metaphors and meanings were different depending on the substance alcohol was combined with. Moreover, we found that, in the realities the metaphors create, the control of use was differently conceptualized. The different aspects of control could be divided into three categories that, however, were not related to any specific substances but overarched all metaphors: 1) controlling pharmacological risks, 2) controlling social appearance and 3) ignoring control. As our findings bring out, often the actual health dangers and risks of the studied substance combinations were bypassed, and the control was rather understood either as a form of socially appropriate behavior or wholly ignored.

Safe, funny and frightening drinking situations from children's viewpoint: Comparing recalled childhood stories about others' drinking in Scandinavia

The article analyzes retrospective childhood stories related to others' drinking (N = 336). The stories have been told in a focus group context in Finland and Sweden. Hence, they are stories about the past that have been constructed in the present. The retrospective childhood stories are analyzed from the perspective of emotions, seen as relational and situational sociocultural constructions, by paying attention to what kind of contact and emotional responses children develop to others' drinking in specific situations. The analysis demonstrates how in an intoxicated-oriented drinking culture the presence of alcohol may signify something outside the bounds of everyday life, in the case of which children develop an ambiguous contact with drinking in which many kinds of positive or negative emotions can emerge, such as love, fun, fear, shame or curiosity. In the Finnish narratives, children's emotional socialization to drinking is regulated by situations of heavy domestic drinking, festive drinking and moderate routine drinking at home. In the Swedish narratives, children's emotional socialization to drinking is governed by festive situations, moderate routine drinking at home and meal drinking. Fear dominates the Finnish participants' recalled childhood stories, whereas fun is the most common emotion in the stories from Sweden. The differences between Finnish and Swedish emotions recalled from childhood in relation to drinking may reflect differences in these culture's drinking practices and/or social interaction norms. The article demonstrates how adults' childhood memories on drinking provide an important 'indirect' source to get knowledge on children's ways of experiencing and responding to others' drinking in various situations.

A virtual academy of polydrug use: Masters, novices and the art of combinations

Aims

Information technology has become an essential part of drug culture, providing a platform for lay knowledge concerning drug use. Due to the co-effects of different substances, making substance "combos" requires advanced skills to enhance pleasures and manage risks. In this study, we focussed on Finnish and Swedish online discussions as a context for learning and sharing experiences of combining substances.

Methods

Taking influences from positioning theory, we used qualitative methods to map what kinds of mutual interactive positions related to the expertise in polydrug use online discussants take and how these positions are negotiated and reformulated in the online setting. We reflect these results through Howard S. Becker's theory of social learning, according to which becoming a drug user is a process that occurs in interaction with other users, as the beginners need a model and advice from experienced users in order to claim their place in the users' community.

Results

In online forums, users discuss the risks and pleasures of combining drugs - on the one hand, in relation to different situations and, on the other hand, in relation to different competence positions. This occurs by asking for advice, presenting one's knowledge, challenging others, repositioning oneself, defending one's position or proving one's competence.

Conclusion

Online discussion forums constitute a kind of virtual academy where knowledge of the pleasures and risks of combining substances is produced and circulated, and where experienced masters mediate their expertise to less experienced novices.

Finnish Newspapers' Positions on Drug Policy between 1993 and 2000

Based on an analysis of editorials published in five Finnish newspapers from 1993 to 2000, this article discusses the role of the print press in the 1990s efforts to bridge the gap between restrictive drug policy and drug-harm-minimization policy in Finland. The analysis shows that from 1993 to 2000 there was a tone of “moral panic” in Finnish newspapers’ assessment that drug trafficking originating from abroad and the related crime were the prime challenge for Finnish drug policy. However, none of the five newspapers considered a restrictive drug policy sufficient. They maintained that while police control was necessary, further steps were needed so that the problem could be properly tackled as the internal national problem that it in fact constituted. The editorials recommended three lines of action: (1) an extensive drug treatment system should be developed, (2) young people, families, and communities should be urged to support a drug-free way of life, and (3) the authorities should be cautious in the introduction of drug testing. However, the analysis shows that the newspapers did not actually deal with the ideological ruptures and tensions that the promotion of drug-harm-reduction techniques caused for the dominant restrictive drug policy. The papers just pragmatically stated that more resources needed to be allocated to the strategy of prohibition as well as to the techniques of harm reduction.

Researching the decline in adolescent drinking: The need for a global and generational approach

Adolescent alcohol consumption has been in decline across many high-income countries since the early to mid-2000s. This is a significant public health trend, with few documented examples from history where such a global downward shift in alcohol consumption has occurred primarily among the adolescent segment of the population. In this commentary we describe the nature and breadth of the trend; reflect on the environmental, social and policy factors that have been proffered; and argue that to adequately understand and support the maintenance of these trends, three important methodological considerations are needed for future research. Firstly, longitudinal panel and qualitative studies are needed to complement and inform continuing cross-sectional research. Secondly, a collaborative cross-cultural approach is needed to contextualise the international scale of the trend and thirdly, future research must be situated within a historical and generational perspective to understand declines in adolescent drinking in the context of a broader shift in adolescent behaviours.

Young adults' experiences of intoxication. An analysis of the dynamics of drinking habits in diary material

Aim

The article studies the current state of Finnish drinking habits in the pub (literally ‘restaurant’ in Finnish) drinking diaries (N=60; 39 women, 21 men) of young adults. Drinking habits are theorised as cultural models by taking influences from Bourdieu's theory of habitus and from phenomenological and pragmatist concepts of habit.

Methods

The analysis of the diary material makes use of the tools developed in semiotic sociology and narratology. The main concern is with 1) what kind of roles or role does alcohol play in the narrators' stories, 2) how does the role of alcohol change or develop in the story lines; and 3) through what kinds of viewpoints is alcohol consumed and experienced? By addressing these three questions, it is possible to make inferences about prevailing drinking habits in Finnish culture.

Results

From the diaries it is possible to identify at least five different types of drinking habits and traditions layered in culture and in active use in social life: heroic intoxication, sociable partying, individual partying, hanging out, and meal drinking. These drinking habits differ from one another in terms of both motives and regulation. Even though they often occur in the same situations, they frame these situations as distinctive fields of activity.

Conclusions

The analysis shows that drinking to intoxication and drinking habits in Finland cannot be reduced to one single cultural core and tradition. In all the drinking habits that appear in the diaries there is a clear tendency to try and break away from goal-oriented, linear time and to move towards a cyclical, timeless time, which may be described as a search for a flow experience.

Artikel

This article explores the distinctive characteristics of present-day drinking habits in Finland. The data are young adults' narratives of their nights out obtained in interviews that asked about ideal, typical, and disastrous nights out. The dataset comprises 117 interviews (60 women and 57 men). The interviewees were recruited from the rapidly growing sectors of information and service work in business and administration: from the meanings assigned by this generation to alcohol we are able to infer which aspects of Finnish drinking habits are still culturally valid and which susceptible to change.

Questions covered in this article include: What motivates young adults to drink? What kind of self-regulation do they exhibit in their drinking? Is getting drunk a value in itself, or does it have a secondary meaning to other activities? Are there any gender differences in drinking habits? We look specifically at the roles of alcohol in young people's nights out and how these roles vary during the course of the evening. Furthermore, the analysis looks at how the narratives are structured on the dimensions of goal-oriented linear time and ritualised repetitive cyclical time. The analysis applies the tools of semiotic sociology.

Our analysis shows that the drinking habits of young adults reflect a movement away from the goal-oriented time of the everyday towards the cyclical time of one's own circle of friends. These breakaways are essentially an exercise in creating and strengthening a general will within the groups. They do not resemble total inversions or transgressions of the prevailing reality, nor are they about defiance, loutish behaviour, getting legless or locked up. Rather, these breakaways find mainly culturally regulated and ordered expressions. Getting drunk is not an end in itself. The inebriation of young women and young men is not one of defiance or a mythical search for new experiences; they just want to be sociable. Indeed one can infer that sociable drinking habits have gained a stronger footing among young adults in Finland today.

Going out, sociability, and cultural distinctions

■ Aim

Pubs are focal stages of sociability. This article investigates the identifications and distinctions between us and them, made by young Finns talking about their own behaviour in pubs, and the pubs they like and dislike.

■ Data & Method

The data consists of 117 interviews with 23 to 35-year-old young Finnish adults who work in business or administration. The method applies classification analysis and is influenced by the structuralist, semiotic, and rhetoric traditions.

■ Results

The analysis shows that many of the interviewees' classifications involve distancing themselves from those people that go to ‘superficial' pubs. The interviewees distinguish themselves from those frequenting superficial places by classifying the interactions there as false and stiff, and contrary to a genuine and relaxed sociability. With these distinctions the interviewees do not aim to distinguish themselves as above' others. Instead, they define themselves as ordinary people by separating themselves from people who are fake, pretentious, or too faddish.

■ Conclusions

[This] opposition to superficiality and the emphasis on authenticity is reminiscent of Rousseau's criticism of trivial needs. The interviewees seem to define sociability in pubs in a way that valorises the virtues of ordinariness and modesty.

Whilst it's Red Wine with Beef, it's Booze with a Cruise!

Aim

The article explores typical drinking situations, practices involved in these situations and the situational control of drinking.

Data and Method

The data consist of 60 diaries (39 women, 21 men) written by young adults aged 23–35. The writers provide descriptions of all their visits to pubs and restaurants and drinking occasions over a period of at least two months. The writers are all IT and service professionals, representing a generation whose descriptions provide an insight into what kinds of drinking situations are receding in Finland; what kinds of situations continue to have cultural relevance; and what kinds of new drinking situations are emerging. Drinking situations are identifed and distinguished from one another by reference to three factors: the motives of drinking, the processes of drinking and the drinkers' subjective commitment to those processes. In addition, drinking situation are analysed from the points of view of gender and (self-)control.

Results

Five main types of drinking situations are extracted from the analysis of the diary accounts: hanging out, meal drinking, partying, carnival and individual activity. Hanging out and meal drinking are described in the diary accounts as drinking situations where gender differences carry little signifcance. These drinking situations encourage the use of alcohol, but not drinking to inebriation. By contrast, the three other types are intoxication-oriented and in them gender differences emerge. Partying, for its part, encourages controlled inebriation. Carnival is a drinking situation that encourages heavy drinking, even beyond consciousness. Also individual activity may encourage heavy drinking. However, in this situation people rarely drink to the same extent as in carnival or party situation since they do not have the security net provided by company.

Conclusions

The heavier drinking the situation encourages, the more gendered the experience appears. women who felt that they had lost control over their bodily activities expressed more shame than men, especially in descriptions of several days' carnival drinking.

Mundane Social Policies in the Context of the Fragmentation of Welfare-State-Oriented Alcohol Policy in Finland

This article examines the values and identity forms that have been accompanied by the transition from welfare-state-oriented alcohol policy to a more liberal alcohol policy in Finland. The data consist of alcohol-problem discourses of focus groups (administrators, managers, journalists) from Helsinki. The alcohol-problem discourse is approached by analyzing how culturally available social policies (as frames) are used and articulated in it. The analysis identifies three different forms of liberalism-utopian liberalism, expressive liberalism, and cynical liberalism-that key persons use in making the transforming social world and its social problems understandable and governable.

Studying ritual and individual orientations to alcohol use: Drinking motives and their connection to intoxication in Finland in the 2000s

BACKGROUND

Finland was an agricultural country until the 1960s. Thereafter, Finland modernized rapidly. Studies have postulated that as Finland becomes modernized, intoxication-oriented drinking would gradually decrease. Current studies, however, show that heavy episodic drinking has lately become more common among men and women. Simultaneously, drinking is seldom motivated by the purpose of getting drunk. The article tackles this conundrum by approaching drinking motives from a ritual and an individual perspective. We study what kinds of drinking motives currently exist in Finland, their prevalence among different population groups, how they vary by social background, and their association with intoxication.

METHODS

The data were collected as part of the nationally representative Drinking Habit Survey in 2008. It consists of verbal descriptions on the most recent drinking occasion (N=521), estimations of its blood alcohol content, and responses to pre-defined standardized motive questions related to the latest drinking occasions (N=8732).

RESULTS

Besides the motive 'to get drunk', also the motives of drinking as a 'time-out' ritual, 'to get into the mood' and 'I drunk to brighten up' predict a "wet" drinking occasion. Overall, Finns highlight drinking motives of sociability, relaxation, meal drinking and situational factors. The more educated orientate to their drinking more with motives that express mastery of cultural capital and individuality. The less educated and the young, again, orientate to their drinking more with motives that imply intoxication and external expectations.

CONCLUSIONS

Whereas the ritual perspective discloses what kinds of situations predict intoxication, the individual perspective reveals what kinds of individualistic orientations are associated with drunkenness. These perspectives partly speak past each other and are difficult to combine. The article proposes that situational perspective would serve as a bridge between them and enable the incorporation of results from different research traditions.

Changes in mortality due to major alcohol-related diseases in four Nordic countries, France and Germany between 1980 and 2009: a comparative age-period-cohort analysis

AIMS

To investigate age, period and cohort effects on time trends of alcohol-related mortality in countries with different drinking habits and alcohol policies.

DESIGN AND SETTING

Age-period-cohort (APC) analyses on alcohol-related mortality were conducted in Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, France and Germany.

PARTICIPANTS

Cases included alcohol-related deaths in the age range 20-84 years between 1980 and 2009.

MEASUREMENTS

Mortality data were taken from national causes of death registries and covered the ICD codes alcoholic psychosis, alcohol use disorders, alcoholic liver disease and toxic effect of alcohol.

FINDINGS

In all countries changes across age, period and cohort were found to be significant for both genders [effect value with confidence interval (CI) shown in Supporting information, Table S1]. Period effects pointed to an increase in alcohol-related mortality in Denmark, Finland and Germany and a slightly decreasing trend in Sweden, while in Norway an inverse U-shaped curve and in France a U-shaped curve was found. Compared with the cohorts born before 1960, the risk of alcohol-related mortality declined substantially in cohorts born in the 1960s and later. Pairwise between-country comparisons revealed more statistically significant differences for period (P < 0.001 for all 15 comparisons by gender) than for age [P < 0.001 in seven (men) and four (women) of 15 comparisons] or cohort [P < 0.01 in two (men) and three (women) of 15 comparisons].

CONCLUSIONS

Strong period effects suggest that temporal changes in alcohol-related mortality in Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, France and Germany between 1980 and 2009 were related to secular differences affecting the whole population and that these effects differed across countries.

"Disease" of the nation, family and individual: three moral discourses of alcohol problems in Finnish women's magazines from the 1960s to the 2000s

Women's magazines can be seen as a genre that form feminized public spaces where everyday life contradictions of women's life are negotiated. The study examines the ways in which Finnish women's magazines have dealt with alcohol problems. The data covers six primary sampling years: 1968, 1976, 1984, 1992, 2000 and 2008. The data is analyzed by drawing on the concept of 'moral regulation'. The analysis shows that a family-centered framing dominated the constructions of alcohol problem: fathers' and husbands' alcoholism appeared as a main object of regulation in all decades under study, while mothers' and wives' alcoholism was much less prevalent.

Adaptation of the Diazyme Direct Enzymatic HbA1c Assay for a microplate reader at room temperature

BACKGROUND

Measurement of hemoglobin A(1c) (HbA(1c)) is a key diagnostic criterion and a key parameter for the follow-up of the treatment of diabetes mellitus. Typically, immunochemical assays of HbA(1c) are performed in clinical chemistry analyzers. In this study, we applied the HbA(1c) assay on a microplate reader at room temperature.

METHODS

HbA(1c) samples were measured using the Direct Enzymatic HbA(1c) Assay from Diazyme Laboratories (Poway, CA, USA) using a Plate Chameleon Microplate Reader (Hidex Co., Turku, Finland) according to the manufacturer's protocol and a modification of the method to room temperature. The Tosoh G7 HPLC method for HbA(1c) (Tosoh Co., Tokyo, Japan) was used as a comparative method.

RESULTS

There was good correlation of HbA(1c) results when the assay was performed at room temperature (+22°C) compared with that at +37°C (r=0.987). The modified method was linear over the HbA(1c) range 4%-14%. Analysis of HbA(1c) results from 50 blood samples by the modified method showed good agreement with the HPLC method (r=0.990).

CONCLUSIONS

The modified Diazyme Direct Enzymatic HbA(1c) Assay™ appears to work as good at +22°C as that performed according to manufacturer's protocol at +37°C.

Changing drinking styles in Denmark and Finland. Fragmentation of male and female drinking among young adults

A traditional heavy intoxication-oriented drinking style, "heroic drinking," is a central drinking practice in Denmark and Finland, especially among men. However, it seems that another drinking style leading to intoxication, "playful drinking," has become more prevalent in Denmark as well as in Finland. Playful drinking is characterized by self-presentations in diverse forms of game situations in which you need to play with different aspects of social and bodily styles. We approach the positions of heroic drinking and playful drinking among young adults (between 17 and 23 years) in Denmark and Finland by analyzing how they discuss these two drinking styles in focus groups (N = 16).

Artikel

J. Törrönen & I. Juslin; Alcohol in women's magazine advertisements from the 1960s to the 2000s

The data for this article consist of alcohol or alcohol-related advertisements appearing in seven Finnish women's magazines: Kodin Kuvalehti (1967–2006), Kotiliesi (1967–2006), Kauneus & Terveys (1967–2006), Me Naiset (1976–2006), Gloria (1991–2006), Trend (1991–2006) and Cosmopolitan (1999–2006). We are interested, firstly, in what kind of subject positions these advertisements have contributed to construct for women's drinking from the 1960s to the present day. Secondly, we analyse the shifts and transformations that have happened in these subject positions with a view to inferring how the cultural position of drinking has changed. Our analysis is grounded in semiotic and phenomenological ways of reading visual materials.

The analysis of these advertising materials indicates that in the 1960s, women were placed in the gendered position of housewife or woman responsible for managing the marital relationship. Women's drinking was confined to the private sphere of the home or associated with meals, general socializing with other couples or with their husbands’ business occasions. These same positions continue to persist in the 1970s and 1980s, taking on only marginal new features. In the 1990s and 2000s, women assume a more prominent role as active agents in public spaces, and drinking is associated with women's own time, pleasure and enjoyment. A picture emerges of a drinking, self-conscious woman who is a responsible consumer, a distinctive consumer, a consumer who toys with stereotypes, and a consumer who is oriented to independent breakaways.

Artikel

Finnish drinking habits have changed drastically during the past few decades. Studies on drinking habits, however, consistently seem to come to the conclusion that in Finland, drinking patterns are still traditional, national, and unitary. Such conclusions rely on the notion of cultural lag and are based on stereotypical dichotomies between traditional and modern, and Finnish and European drinking habits. The article shows that analyses of drinking habits tend not to problematise the concept of habit. It is mostly used to refer to the most stereotypical kind of drinking behaviour, namely intoxication-oriented drinking, while other patterns tend to be overshadowed. The studies, which are most often based on survey data, also give little attention to the meanings the actors attribute to their drinking. For a more sensitive analysis, the article outlines a cultural model of drinking habits, which is then adapted to the analysis of the results of both statistical and qualitative studies on drinking habits carried out during the past three-four decades. The analysis shows that it would be vital, firstly, to carry out time series analyses on the epidemiological data, which would test the assumptions of the unitary nature of drinking habits on the one hand, and chart their variability on the other. Secondly, there is a need for efforts to reconcile the contradictory findings of epidemiological and qualitative studies. And thirdly, research on drinking habits should shift its focus towards the situational variability of drinking.

Artikel

■ Aim

Pubs are focal stages of sociability. This article investigates the identifications and distinctions between us and them, made by Finnish people talking about their own behaviour in pubs, and the pubs they like and dislike. The data consists of 117 interviews with 23 to 35-year-old young adults who work in business or administration.

■ Method

The method applies classification analysis and is influenced by the structuralist, semiotic, and rhetoric traditions.

■ Results

The analysis shows that many of the interviewees' classifications involve distancing themselves from those people that go to ‘superficial' pubs. The interviewees distinguish themselves from those frequenting superficial places by classifying the interactions there as false and stiff, and contrary to a genuine and relaxed sociability. With these distinctions the interviewees do not aim to distinguish themselves as ‘above' others. Instead, they define themselves as ordinary people by separating themselves from people who are fake, pretentious, or too faddish.

■ Conclusions

This opposition to superficiality and the emphasis on authenticity is reminiscent of Rousseau's criticism of artificial needs. The Finnish interviewees seem to define sociability in pubs in a way that valorises the virtues of ordinariness and modesty. The results of the study speak for the persistence of the norm of equality, inherited from the peasant culture, rather than for the strength of the middle class culture which emphasises taste hierarchies.

The authority of the police in the regulation of public drinking in Finland

Aim

The aim was to study the values, objectives, means and stances of the police in the regulation of public drinking by using interviews taken from police officers working in Helsinki, Lappeenranta and Tampere.

Method

The interviews were analysed by addressing 1) the classifications the police used in the definition of the targets of regulation, 2) what kinds of techniques they supported in the management of targets and 3) what aspirations, rights and responsibilities they assumed for those who exercise authority and for those that are to be governed.

Results

The police identified two basic groups in the regulation of public drinking: alcoholics who live in the street, and the young. Alcoholics were the main target of regulation from the 1960s to the 1980s. The young became the principal target of regulation during the 1990s. According to the police, alcoholics are a cosmetic problem of public order. Instead, the disorderly drinking of the young is a serious problem. In the regulation of the behaviour of the young, however, the main responsibility belongs to families and schools. Overall, the police emphasised that their authority to govern public drinking has dwindled with the individualization and liberalization of society. Therefore, the liability in policing has to be spread onto private agencies and organisations. On the other hand, the police pointed out that drugs have become the most acute problem of public order. In the regulation of this problem, they advocated tough measures.

Conclusions

The results suggest that the regulation of public drinking of the police has become differentiated. Policing is directed towards the young because adults are regarded as sovereign actors whose rights to express themselves in public places are difficult to limit. At the same time, however, the behaviour of adults is governed indirectly by emphasising the ethos of parenthood and through public/private alliances.

The Finnish press's political position on alcohol between 1993 and 2000

AIMS

To examine Finnish commentary on changes in alcohol policy between 1993 and 2000. Data. A corpus of newspaper editorials on alcohol issues from six daily newspapers published between 1993 and 2000.

METHOD

The editorials were analysed as 'pending narratives' by examining how they used 'morally loaded binary discourse', 'utopian discourse' and 'truth discourse'.

FINDINGS

Almost half the editorials discussed alcohol policy in terms of freedom from the restrictive alcohol policy of the state. Encouraging liberalization of alcohol policy peaked in 1996 and 1997. However, as problems of public order became more prominent in the media at the end of the 1990s, claims for the liberalization of alcohol policy died away and between 1998 and 2000 issues of public order dominated those of freedom. In addition, concern about the intoxication-orientated drinking habits of the young and of children became prominent.

CONCLUSIONS

The results suggest that, after advocating more liberalized alcohol policy and then seeing that there were some groups who responded irresponsibly to this, the middle-class concern about freedom turned into concern about the security of public places and this was reflected in the media. This analysis highlights the dynamic nature of public opinion and media advocacy in response to changes in policy.

Drugs and change in the welfare state framework as reflected in newspaper editorials

This article presents a comparative analysis of the treatment of the drug problem and drug policy issues in Finnish newspaper editorials across three periods, viz. 1966–1971, 1972–1985 and 1993–2000. The material for the first two periods was obtained through Alko Inc.'s library and information service, while the editorials published in the 1990s were drawn from the newspapers' own electronic archives.

The analysis reveals three main shifts in the welfare state's drug policy rationality over the past 35 years.

First, there has been a shift from the closed nation to a global world. During the first drug wave of the 1960s Finland was categorised as a separate, isolated corner beyond the reach of the world's trafficking routes, and the aim was to create a united national front in defence against the external enemy. In the 1990s, the enemy is both on the outside and in, and Finland is positioned as an integral part of global processes.

Secondly, there is evidence of a transition from the protection of deviant individuals and groups to the protection of the whole population. When drug use began to attract attention in the 1960s, it was categorised mainly as a problem for youths. The aim was to keep Finland clean above all by protecting the youth: this, it was hoped, could be achieved through police control, on the one hand, and education, on the other. In the 1990s drugs were no longer categorised solely as a youth problem, but the whole population is affected. The newspapers began to deconstruct the deviant label by arguing that drug users were ordinary Finnish youths who needed to be helped rather than isolated. The need for help and support was raised alongside the issue of protection (care and harm reduction). The shift in emphasis from deviance control to the development of treatment and care clearly illustrates the shift in the welfare state framework from paternalistic protection to client-ism that underlines the individual's rights and clienthood.

Third, there has been a shift in the way that the actors in the drug problem are positioned. The control-oriented action programme that stressed the subject position of the police in the efforts to combat the first drug wave, was widely endorsed in the print press in the 1970s, even though there were other proposed positions in the newspapers in the 1960s. In the 1990s this model was called into question. The position take in the press was that it would no longer be possible to fend off the second drug wave simply by means of control and policing. There were growing calls for prevention, treatment and harm reduction alongside criminal control. According to the predominant line of thinking in the editorials, the new action programme was to be based upon equal cooperation among control authorities and other actors. In this programme the concept of drug offender was broken down into the components of sellers and users. The subject position of the control authorities was defined above all through combatting drug trade. Drug users, by contrast, were to be integrated into society: responsibility for this was given to the welfare state's service system and to various community actors. In the division of labour among state authorities, this model implied a strengthening of the position of the service system in the field of drug policy.

There are also important continuities to be seen in the welfare state's drug policy rationality. Key among these is that related to the view of young people as the major group at risk that requires national protection. There has also been a strong emphasis in all three periods on collective welfare state responsibility.

The rationality of the prevention of substance abuse from the local authorities' point of view

In Finland, the role of the state in reorganising alcohol policy has become that of an information guide, and the responsibility for practical arrangements has been increasingly delegated to municipalities. With the dismantling of the state-run centralised alcohol policy system, the focus has been shifted to the prevention of substance abuse at the local level. The reorganisations have intensified the pressure to find adequate methods for preventing substance abuse at the local level.

In this article, we will discuss the pressures created by the dismantling of the state-run alcohol policy and the decentralisation of responsibility in the context of three cities. Our data consists of interviews with authorities from Helsinki, Tampere, and Lappeenranta who have actively participated in local co-operation projects in the substance abuse field.

The data was analysed from two different perspectives. First, we studied the data from the information perspective by examining how familiar our interviewees were with the recent history of alcohol policy and the changes in the alcohol policy system. We were also interested in their views on the reorganisations in the prevention of substance abuse and the reallocation of resources. Then, we analysed our data with the tools provided by the positioning theory and semiotic sociology.

A common feature for all three cities was that the prevention of substance abuse was perceived as the correct method for preventing and treating substance abuse problems. The role of the third sector in the prevention of substance abuse grew in the 1990s, which was also deemed important.

Differences emerged between cities, for example, in the identification of substance abuse problems. In Helsinki and Tampere, mixed substance abuse was categorised as the most serious substance abuse problem, whereas in Lappeenranta alcohol abuse was regarded as such.

Differences were also apparent in the ways in which authorities positioned themselves in the welfare tradition of restrictive alcohol policy. Interviewees from Helsinki and Tampere saw the reorganisations in alcohol policy as a change of direction within the old tradition. The prevailing opinion in Lappeenranta was that the prevention of substance abuse has created space for the revival of collective responsibility in the spirit of old village communities.

Helsinki was clearly lagging behind in the development of networks within the substance abuse field. Authorities from Helsinki admitted that the co-operation network between authorities was still in its infancy, whereas authorities from Tampere and Lappeenranta maintained that a sustainable co-operation scheme had been in progress for a long time.