Finnish attitudes to alcohol policy in 2005

This article gives an overview of changes in alcohol policy in Finland during the last decades and developments in public alcohol policy opinions revealed in the latest Gallup poll conducted on January 2005. During the last decades, all three pillars of the Nordic alcohol control policy—strict physical availability of alcoholic beverages, high alcohol taxes and prices, and the comprehensive alcohol monopoly system—has been weakened. At the same time, total alcohol consumption and alcohol‐related problems have increased. Public attitudes of alcohol policy have not always followed the changes in alcohol consumption and related problems. During the last decade, alcohol policy attitudes have become somewhat stricter. Besides increases in total alcohol consumption and related problems, since 1994 changes in drinking habits and contexts have affected alcohol policy attitudes, especially the abolishment of rules forbidding drinking in a public place leading to an increase in problem‐prone drinking and related behaviour in many kinds of public places like parks, playing grounds, streets and shopping malls. Also youthful drinking has become, if not more frequent, at least clearly more visible and more frequently discussed in the media.