Towards Individual Responsibilities: Interests affecting major alcohol policy changes in 1950s Austria

AbstractDiverging opinions on alcohol policy in Austria, in evidence in parliamentary discourse between 1877 and 1934, were replaced by political consensus in the 1950s under exceptional circumstances. Following the depression, the Civil War and the transformation of the country into a German province in the late 1930s and after World War Two, Austria suffered economically. Austria was also politically diminished due to its status as an occupied country until 1955. As a result of a newly-achieved political consensus within Austria, production and retail of alcoholic beverages were finally released of the demanded restrictions which had been raised for decades. Alcoholic beverages became “ordinary goods” with circumscribed, controllable risks, and responsibility for the consequences of alcohol consumption was delegated to the individual. Based on documentary and discourse analysis, the results of the analysis the present study raise the question of whether the development of Austrian alcohol policy is to b...