ALICE RAP · Addictions and Lifestyles In Contemporary Europe – Reframing Addictions Project

ALICE RAP is a Europe wide project of 43 partner research institutions involving 107 researchers from 25 European countries providing 1000 months of a plurality of scientific endeavour to analyse the place and challenges of addictions and lifestyles to the cohesion, organization and functioning of contemporary European society. Through integrated multidisciplinary research, a wide range of factors will be studied through a foresight approach to inform a redesign of effective addictions governance. Ownership will be described by an historical study of addiction through the ages, an analysis of public and private stakeholder views, and through image analyses, of professional and citizenship views. A study of how addictions are classified and defined will be followed by estimates of their health, social and economic impact. Determinants of addiction will be investigated through a coordinated and cohesive social, economic and biological analysis of initiation, transition into problem use and transition into and out of dependence. The business of addiction will be analyzed through studies of revenues, profits and participants in legal and illegal trade, the impact of suppliers on addictive substance use and behaviours, and analyses of webs of influence on policy responses. Addictions governance will be studied by describing the views and forces that determine the ways societies steer themselves and by stock taking of present governance practices to old and emerging addictions. Youth as customers will be analyzed through considering the impacts of new technologies on promoting and mitigating use, by studying the interrelations of culture and biology, and by determining features that promote resilience and nudge young people to reduce problematic use. The programme itself will be professionally managed from a partnership perspective to promote a coordinated and integrated approach to the high volume of research and its policy implications.