A. A.'s Country-wide News Circuit

A.A.s in California and Minneapolis have participated recently in conferences on the alcoholic problem. In Minneapolis, Minn., the second Institute on Chronic Alcoholism, sponsored by the Hennepin County and State Bar Association at the University of Minnesota heard representatives from the Midwest Council on Alcoholism and A.A. during a program built around the theme of handling the chronic alcoholic. Principal agreements at the conference indicated opinions that existing treatment by incarceration, medication, admonitions and release should give way to a modern clinical service, that chronic alcoholism requires the introduction of the concept of the latter as a disease into legal codes and practices, and that the recognition of the almost invariable association of neurosis or psychosis with chronic alcoholism requires the introduction of new methods into the pratique of social service institutions. Many national authorities spoke. In Los Angeles, Calif., alcoholism was viewed as a public health problem during a conference of leading doctors, psychiatrists and social workers under the sponsorship of the Welfare Council, The Southern California Society for Mental Hygiene and individual members of A.A. F. R., active Los Angeles A.A. who died recently, had worked for some months toward the conference and had met frequently with Dr. Anton Carlson of the Research Council on Problems of Alcohol in the interest of such a conference.