Drinking age issue.

[Psyber]

This came from a members only medical website so posting the link won't work.

Small amounts of alcohol risky for teens - Monday, April 13, 2009 - AAP

Research has found that teenagers who drink even small amounts of alcohol have a significantly higher risk of engaging in alcohol abuse or risky sexual behaviour as a young adult.

Fairfax newspapers say the study casts doubt on national guidelines that suggest there is a "low risk" level of drinking for under-18s.

Experts say it provides evidence for a move away from the "harm minimisation" approach to teenage drinking and could even fuel a campaign to raise the legal drinking age.

The team at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute in Melbourne say their study, which tracked 1,520 young people's drinking habits over more than 10 years from the mid-teens, shows no "safe" or "sensible" level of drinking for adolescents.

Official guidelines from the National Health and Medical Research Council define a "low risk" level of drinking for adults as fewer than three standard drinks a day.

The researchers found that even at this level, teenagers increased their chances of alcohol abuse, social or legal problems, or alcohol-related high-risk sexual behaviours 10 years later.

[Sojourner]

What concerns me is that the Governments both State and Federal are only to keen to make noises about dealing with the Drug issue, yet in 90+ % of cases relating to drug abuse, the drug is Alcohol, not Mary Jane or Eccies or whatever is popular currently in the media.

Domestic Violence, assualts etc etc often always have abuse of alcohol as a key factor.

I cant see them raising the drinking age, yet its fairly obvious that the current system is not working.

What I would like to see is a mandatory closing time of hotels, in the Tea Tree Gully council area they were having a number of problems with behaviour of patrons spilling out into the community, so the council issued a by law stating that all licensed premesis had to close by 3am. Several years later the number of incidents have been more than halved and residents are reported in the local messenger pushing for it to go further. It is my thought that the Federal Goverment need to have a look into 24 hour trading and make some hard decisions rather than just trying to place high taxes on alchol which does little to change the culture of drinking unlike moderating the times places are open

My 2c anyway!

[Q.]

What is the percentage of teenagers who drink at the specified low-level and above? Then what is the correlation value used in the research to determine a significant relationship?

Let's say that 75% of teenagers drink at their specified level and above and the study correlation coefficient is 0.66, then what it is suggesting is that around 50% of adults abuse alcohol or have 'social' or 'legal' problems. What do they define as alcohol abuse? What are 'social' and 'legal' problems? Wow, who would have thought that 1 in 2 adults would experience some level of sociological anxiety

How can they possibly ever determine that teenage drinking is a major cause of complex sociological anxieties experienced as an adult? They can't and trying to only simplifies our interactions within our environment.


Psyber, what is the name of the article and what medical journal is it printed in?

[Psyber]

Psyber, what is the name of the article and what medical journal is it printed in?

I've noticed there is a groundswell inthe newspapers and the medical literature about teenage drinking, and I put this up as a note about current issues in the literature and the popular press, and not as something I would regard as proven fact. It came from MedConnect, and gave credit only to the "Murdoch Children's Research Institute in Melbourne" in the text I quoted.
[MedConnect is sponsored by pharmaceutical company Elsevier, so we would be justly sceptical if it were something that could sell a drug for.]

My original source was:
http://www.medconnect.com.au/News/NewsA ... psychiatry

After a bit of digging around I found a comment in the West Australian which said, "The study, published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health....."
I haven't bothered to seek out the original.

I am not convinced drinking responsibly in youth is by itself likely to cause problems - I had my first alcoholic drink at 10 - earlier if you count the alcohol component of the old cough medicine "YCough".
However, I think teenagers who drink every day. even only one drink every day, are likely to be at risk.
Mind you, I think adults who drink every day are too.

[Iron Fist]

Psyber, what is the name of the article and what medical journal is it printed in?

I've noticed there is a groundswell inthe newspapers and the medical literature about teenage drinking, and I put this up as a note about current issues in the literature and the popular press, and not as something I would regard as proven fact. It came from MedConnect, and gave credit only to the "Murdoch Children's Research Institute in Melbourne" in the text I quoted.
[MedConnect is sponsored by pharmaceutical company Elsevier, so we would be justly sceptical if it were something that could sell a drug for.]

My original source was:
http://www.medconnect.com.au/News/NewsA ... psychiatry

After a bit of digging around I found a comment in the West Australian which said, "The study, published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health....."
I haven't bothered to seek out the original.

I am not convinced drinking responsibly in youth is by itself likely to cause problems - I had my first alcoholic drink at 10 - earlier if you count the alcohol component of the old cough medicine "YCough".
However, I think teenagers who drink every day. even only one drink every day, are likely to be at risk.
Mind you, I think adults who drink every day are too.

being a young guy, I think I can safely say that the majority of people my age 15-21 would drink maybe once twice a week
but in those 1-2 times it is a binge which would probably be at least half a carton or bottle of something for a guy and probs 4-8 pre mix drinks for girls!
I have noticed that young people that attend uni are more at risk to drink more then the 1 or 2 times a week.
for the sheer reason they dont have to get up and go to work at 8:30 every morning, they have the liberty of not going to lectures or even just looking at there lecture on the internet.
In saying this, cutting back the amount of drinking done on uni campus' would actively lower the amount of drinking that the students would do I believe!

changing the drinking age will make it harder for teenagers to go out and drink but as it seen with high school students they still find a way to get hold of the stuff, and if this was to happen then I think it could have a negative effect of neighbour hoods, with more house partys happening which in turn would mean more damage and distrubance would occur in neighbour hoods.
even though binge drinking is bad, wouldnt you prefer to have it done at a place which has the facilites to some extent to contain fights and crowds rather then in you streets where kids could cause havoc??

[Brock Landers]

The USA has a legal drinking age of 21 I believe? How does the binge drinking stats there measure up against countries that have a legal drinking age of 18?

IMO I don't think raising the drinking age will lessen the rate of binge drinking amongst 15-21 year olds.

[Iron Fist]

The USA has a legal drinking age of 21 I believe? How does the binge drinking stats there measure up against countries that have a legal drinking age of 18?

IMO I don't think raising the drinking age will lessen the rate of binge drinking amongst 15-21 year olds.

I agree
should also be compared to Germany which has a legal drinking age of 16 IIRC

[heater31]

The USA has a legal drinking age of 21 I believe? How does the binge drinking stats there measure up against countries that have a legal drinking age of 18?

IMO I don't think raising the drinking age will lessen the rate of binge drinking amongst 15-21 year olds.

IMO I think it would be worse if it is like the image portrayed in movies/TV shows of the College culture

[Psyber]

More news on the issue:

An alarming increase in cirrhosis in Britain and other northern European countries might be linked with a
growing culture of binge drinking, liver experts have warned. “The binge drinking phenomenon is now spreading throughout
young populations in almost all Western countries,” they said.

Bingeing seemed more prevalent in countries where social drinking was based more on beer and spirits than on wine. Mortality
from cirrhosis had increased by 45% in Britain in the last decade, in stark contrast to a decline in mortality in wine-drinking countries
such as France and Italy.

Most epidemiological studies of cirrhosis and other liver disease had focussed on chronic daily alcohol use.
However, more recent research had confirmed that binge drinking – for example of five or more drinks in two
hours – was an also independent risk factor for cirrhosis, regardless of longer-term alcohol use.

Two classic habits of bingeing were drinking between meals and drinking different types of alcohol in one session.

Experimental data supported the toxic effects of binge drinking. Findings included an increase in serum nitric oxide levels which
increased portal pressure, mitochondrial dysfunction, hepatic apoptosis and ischaemic liver injury.