The developments in living conditions in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have become subject to considerable attention during the last decade. The move away from the old state centrally planned system towards modern market-oriented economies has created many challenges, and a key question is in which ways the economic and political transition has affected the prevalence of health and social problems in these countries. These issues have not only been addressed from a national perspective, but they have also been viewed in a larger context. The Baltic states’ relations to the European Union (EU) are central. After restoring independence in 1990 (Lithuania) and 1991 (Estonia and Latvia), each of the three countries applied for EU membership in the autumn of 1995. On receipt of these applications, the European Commission asserted that social reform ought to be pursued, and that the public health system needed to be significantly improved in order to qualify for EU membership (European Commission, 1997a; 1997b; 1997c). In the case of tobacco consumption, drug and alcohol abuse, the European Parliament summed up the situation in 2000 as “bad and getting worse” (European Parliament, 2000). The present paper focuses on the use of alcohol in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania during the second half of the 1990s.