Our content is relevant and on track

An audit of work published in the Nordic Studies on Alcohol and Drugs (NAD) since the beginning of 2019 shows that contributions can be grouped into four main scopes. The categories are partly overlapping so the categorisation is rough. Our audit showed that 38% of the total content (213 texts) covered policy, opinions and the organisation of research. The same amount of work – 38% – was concerned with monitoring and investigating use, harms and addiction-related phenomena. The third category of content was the inquiry of societal planning and social institutional solutions: approximately 13% of new material could be claimed to belong to this scope. Last but not least, 11% of the content covered questions related to treatment and care.

Geographically, a large majority of the articles (71%) focused on the Nordic countries and the rest of Europe (10%). A total of 7% covered the rest of the world or tackled global issues. Some articles (11%) had no geographic link and were more general in nature. Since the beginning of 2019 we have published three thematic issues. These have dealt with Nordic gambling policies, drinking patterns among the elderly in the Nordics and how to relate to and understand cannabis.

The results of this small internal audit align with the aims and scope of the journal. NAD is a social science journal with a Nordic focus. Nordic research and comparative settings have always been an important prioritisation.

Nordic research on alcohol, drugs, tobacco and gambling has been intrinsically related to the Nordic welfare model, which can be described as a concerted effort, through public institutions, to reduce economic inequality and to develop a safety net for all citizens, based on values such as equal worth, compassion and tolerance. Many of our articles have a social or welfare political framing, and much of the research published in our journal is useful when developing Nordic welfare policies and social structural solutions to problems. The articles published in NAD also produce knowledge on topics such as increased debt, complex forms of marginalisation, employment, procurement practices and service integration.

The content in NAD mirrors bigger shifts in Nordic research organisation, interests and funding. At the same time, our small review of the content shows proof of the journal being able to offer a counterbalance to larger trends of medicalisation, psy science domination and the more Anglo-American variant of a public health framing (see Hellman, 2018; Stenius, 2018). NAD still entails critical conceptual, socio-cultural and policy research – the kind of foci that is typical for Nordic research in this area.

This issue of NAD deals with alcohol in various ways, from capturing trends among different demographic groups to analysing the impacts of various types of alcohol retail systems. Four texts deal with the Nordics, one with the UK, one with Australia and one is more general in nature.

Sherk et al. (2023) estimate the economic, health and social impacts of alcohol use in Finland in two scenarios, where public ownership of alcohol sales is either increased or fully privatised.

Alcohol affordability measures are important instruments to monitor alcohol control policy. Müller and colleagues provide and apply an alcohol affordability index for Sweden that allows for various forms of comparisons (Müller et al., 2023). This index should be useful in most Nordic settings with uniform off-premises prices for alcohol and can facilitate governmental supervision of the alcohol market.

Making use of a population-based longitudinal cohort study, Anna Sidorchuk et al. (2023) investigate whether trajectories of alcohol consumption over time in Sweden differ according to beverage types, and to what extent lifestyle, health and background factors predict beverage-specific trajectories. Alan Warde et al. (2023) examine an understudied topic: how patterns of alcohol consumption are affected the accompaniment of food. They found that the presence of food affects how much and what types of beverages are consumed. The study is accompanied by a commentary by David Inglis (2023).

Two articles in this issue approach student drinking in contexts where students are at higher risks of harm. Leontini and Corney (2023) investigate tertiary education residential accommodation drinking cultures in Australia, where widespread heavy drinking is made possible by a liberal approach to alcohol governance and poorly disseminated policies. Danehorn et al. (2023) compare the alcohol use, mental health and sexual behaviour of Swedish exchange students compared with those who remained at home.