Reducing the Strength: a mixed methods evaluation of alcohol retailers' willingness to voluntarily reduce the availability of low cost, high strength beers and ciders in two UK local authorities.

BACKGROUND: Reducing the Strength is an increasingly popular intervention in which local authorities ask retailers to stop selling 'super-strength' beers and ciders. The intervention cannot affect alcohol availability, nor consumption, unless retailers participate. In this paper, we ask whether and why retailers choose or refuse to self-impose restrictions on alcohol sales in this way. METHODS: Mixed method assessment of retailers' participation in Reducing the Strength in two London (UK) local authorities. Compliance rates and the cheapest available unit of alcohol at each store were assessed. Qualitative interviews with retailer managers and staff (n = 39) explored attitudes towards the intervention and perceptions of its impacts. RESULTS: Shops selling super-strength across both areas fell from 78 to 25 (18 % of all off-licences). The median price of the cheapest unit of alcohol available across all retailers increased from £0.29 to £0.33 and in shops that participated in Reducing the Strength it rose from £0.33 to £0.43. The project received a mixed response from retailers. Retailers said they participated to deter disruptive customers, reduce neighbourhood disruptions and to maintain a good relationship with the local authority. Reducing the Strength participants and non-participants expressed concern about its perceived financial impact due to customers shopping elsewhere for super-strength. Some felt that customers' ability to circumvent the intervention would limit its effectiveness and that a larger scale compulsory approach would be more effective. CONCLUSIONS: Reducing the Strength can achieve high rates of voluntary compliance, reduce availability of super-strength and raise the price of the cheapest available unit of alcohol in participating shops. Questions remain over the extent to which voluntary interventions of this type can achieve wider social or health goals if non-participating shops attract customers from those who participate

Effect of withdrawal of co-proxamol on prescribing and deaths from drug poisoning in England and Wales: time series analysis

Objective To assess the effect of the UK Committee on Safety of Medicines’ announcement in January 2005 of withdrawal of co-proxamol on analgesic prescribing and poisoning mortality

Mimmo Rotella e il Surrealismo: i rimandi all’iconografia surrealista negli oggetti, nei frottages e negli éffaçages

Il volume è pubblicato in occasione del centenario della nascita di Mimmo Rotella, in concomitanza della più ampia mostra mai realizzata sull'artista. Ricco di contributi critici e di un vasto apparato iconografico, il volume ripercorre tutte le tappe della carriera dell'artista, nato a Catanzaro nel 1918: dalle prime opere astratte, alle esperienze informali degli anni '50, dalla relazione con il Nouveau Réalisme di Pierre Restany, alle tangenze con la Pop Art, al rapporto con l'America. Ampio approfondimento è dedicato alla sua ricerca più nota, quella intorno ai décollages e ai retro d'affiches, ma viene anche indagato il rapporto con città come New York, Roma, Parigi e Milano, con la critica d'arte e con gli artisti contemporanei. Completano il volume apparati biobibliografici. testi di: Clare Bell, Tobia Bezzola, Paola Bonani, Ester Coen, Vincenzo De Bellis, Veronica Locatelli, Lola Lorant, Elizabeth Mangini, Gianfranco Maraniello, Massimo Mininni, Luca Pietro Nicoletti, Massimo Romeri, Paul-Louis Roubert, Francesca Pola, Marta Sironi, Antonella Soldaini, Chiara Spangaro, Francesco Tedeschi, Giulia Tulino, Riccardo Ventur