Projects & Research Partnerships

Introduction

ALICE RAP was a five year European research project (2011-2016), co-financed by the European Commission that brought together around 200 scientists from more than 25 countries and 29 different disciplines. It aimed to strengthen scientific evidence to inform the public and political dialogue and to stimulate a broad and productive debate on current and alternative approaches to addictions.

About the research

The project was organised into seven research themes:

• Area 1 – Ownership of Addictions: a historical study of addiction over the ages, an analysis of stakeholder views and image analyses
• Area 2 – Counting Addictions: how addictions are classified and defined, pulling together the enormous quantity of data on multiple addictions and their impacts on health and society.
• Area 3 – Determinants of addiction: aims to better understand the initiation, transition into problem use and transition into and out of dependence.
• Area 4 – Business of addiction: studies revenues, profits and participants in legal and illegal trade, the impact of suppliers and webs of influence on policy responses.
• Area 5 – Governance of addiction: the ways in which societies steer themselves to deal with different lifestyles, present governance practices on established and emerging addictions, and future scenarios.
• Area 6 – Addicting the Young: youth as customers, the impacts of new technologies on use, the interrelations of culture and biology, and features that promote resilience and reduce problematic use.
• Area 7 – Coordination and Integration: the programme management takes a partnership perspective, built on the idea that health and social challenges cannot be successfully tackled by actors working alone.

Area 3 was led by Professor Petra Meier at the Sheffield Alcohol Research Group and colleagues at University College London and Technische Universitaet Dresden and aimed to gain a better understanding of why some people become addicted to substances or gambling while others don't.

The process was divided into three stages and three associated work packages:

• WP7 – Determinants of the transition from no or low risk use to risky substance use and gambling.
• WP8 – Determinants of the transition from risky to harmful substance use and gambling.
• WP9 – Determinants of the transition from harmful to low risk substance use and gambling.

For these three main transition stages, the work packages aimed to develop agreed definitions for substance use and gambling, and to obtain estimates for the transition probabilities. These were then used to show the strengths of the determinants and interactions, and reframe our understanding of addictions.