THE MORAL VALENCE ON CONTROLLED OR MODERATE DRINKING

drinking " is a moralized category. "Controlled drinking " or "moderate drinking " or "social drinking " is often thought of in North America as occupying the middle position in a three-category typology of drinking, between abstention, on the one hand, and "alcoholic drinking", on the other. While the term "controlled drinking " has primarily been used in a clinical context, referring to clients defined as having had problems with their drinking, the terms "moderate drinking " or "social drinking " have occupied the same position, between abstention and alcoholic drinking, with reference to the population in general. As has often been noted (e.g., Moore and Gerstein, 1981; Room, 1974), in its heyday the alcoholism movement's governing image was of drinkers being divided into two distinct types: alcoholics and social drinkers. In this image, the differentiation was foreordained by a "predisposing X factor " (Jellinek, 1952), fixed genetically or in childhood, which meant that an alcoholic could never drink normally, and presumably that someone lacking the "X " factor could never become an alcoholic. The focus on the differentiation between alcoholism and controlled/social/moderate drinking identified the distinction in terms of the patterning of behaviour over time. Alcoholic