A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
The alcohol industry makes claims to governments that contradict and obfuscate science in an attempt to influence marketing regulations and prevent more stringent controls on products, an Australian study has found. An author of the paper, Prof Kypros Kypri, said the findings showed that alcohol industry lobbying of politicians and involvement in discussions about policy [...]
Researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine have identified 34 neural factors that predict adolescent alcohol consumption. The list, based upon complex algorithms analyzing data from neuropsychological testing and neuroimaging studies, was significantly more accurate —approximately 74 percent — than demographic information alone. A mix of social, psychological and biological mechanisms [...]
“What’s the safe age to start drinking?” This is a very common question that students, teachers and parents ask when talking about the risks of drinking. Whilst the legal age for drinking in Australia is 18 years, there are many different opinions about when and how it is safest for a person to try alcohol [...]
If you can't control the urge to drink, there is a set of neurons to be blamed. Scientists have pinpointed a population of neurons in the brain that influences whether one drink leads to two and so on. The discovery could ultimately lead to a cure for alcoholism and other addictions, researchers from the Texas [...]
It's 4.30 on Friday afternoon and Nick Swifte is cracking open a beer with colleagues. By his own admission, the 45-year-old advertising executive is a "drinker of some renown". "I like getting drunk. I'm a big fan of it. Working as a media buyer there is booze everywhere. Any function you go to, every achievement, every win, [...]
A new study has revealed that almost two thirds of people identified as being harmed by the drinking of others in a 2008 survey, were still being harmed three years later. And it’s not your age, gender or the number of times that you go out that is most likely to determine whether you are [...]
A new study has found that binge drinking in young, healthy adults significantly disrupts the immune system. For the study, researcher Majid Afshar, M.D., M.S.C.R., now at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, had volunteers drink four or five shots of vodka, then took blood samples to measure their immune systems. The researchers found [...]
It is that time of the year again…the impending departure of year 12 students from school and the associated ‘rights of passage’ that accompany this departure. In Australia, one ‘right of passage’ is referred to as ‘schoolies’ and the term itself elicits numerous discussion and debates. One of the most controversial issues centres on the [...]
Over the last fortnight it’s been interesting to read the reporting about the release of a couple of key pieces of alcohol data in Australia. The Australian Bureau of Statistics released its Apparent Consumption of Alcohol, Australia, 2012-13 report, which shows Australians are drinking less alcohol overall than any time in the previous 15 years. [...]
Professor Mike Daube, the director of the Public Health Advocacy Institute and the McCusker Centre for Action on Alcohol and Youth, said the campaign used crass language to encourage alcohol consumption and was "pretty much the most irresponsible advertising I've ever seen". He called for the advertisements to be withdrawn immediately. The advertising campaign features [...]
