Robin Room is Professor and Director of the Centre for Social Research on Alcohol and Drugs, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden. At the time of preparing this paper, he was Chief Scientist at the Addiction Research Foundation Division of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, and Professor (status only) in the Departments of Sociology, Psychiatry and Public Health Sciences at the University of Toronto. Dr Room is a sociologist, educated at Princeton and the University of California, Berkeley. From 1977 to 1991, he was Scientifi c Director of the Alcohol Research Group in Berkeley, California, and an Adjunct Professor in the School of Public Health at UC Berkeley.

Dr. Room is a member of the World Health Organization's Expert Advisory Panel on Drug and Alcohol Dependence and a recipient of the Jellinek Memorial Award for Alcohol Studies.