Mission & Justice

11/5/08

Many more underage Australians believe it is acceptable to drink alcohol on a regular basis today than they did 16 years ago, according to a national survey. The Dolly Youth Monitor, which has surveyed thousands of teenagers between the age of 10 to 17 since 1992, found there has been a sharp increase in the numbers that approve of alcohol use. The latest edition of the bi-annual survey found that 80 per cent believed regular drinking was acceptable, while back in 1992 only 64 per cent thought so.

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Walaa Hawari; 11/5/08
The National Society for Human Rights has urged officials to take urgent steps to save more than 900 children between 7 and 18 currently in juvenile homes across the Kingdom on drug related charges. There are 280 youngsters in juvenile homes in Jizan, 216 in Riyadh, 213 in Jeddah and nine in Hail. As part of efforts to prevent drug addiction, the Ministry of Interior and the General Directorate for Combating Drugs have developed a school program. The program, which aims to educate students about the harmful effects of drugs, is expected to be implemented in all academic levels starting next year.

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Rachel Browne; 11/5/08

A leading Sydney pub is banning alcopops to curb binge drinking and alcohol-fuelled violence. Manly’s Steyne Hotel is to ban all ready-to-drink beverages over the bar from tomorrow. It will also stop bottle shop sales of alcopops after 8pm. The beverages account for about 10 per cent of the Steyne’s weekly trade but hotel general manager Guy Fraser-Hills said the pub was prepared to lose business to combat anti-social behaviour due to excessive drinking.

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Jamie Walker; 10/5/08

Having  worked on 50 Aboriginal land rights cases, anthropologist Peter Sutton says that time is up for the nation’s troubled indigenous communities. Professor Sutton, picking up on this week’s Mullighan report in South Australia, the latest to uncover rampant child sex crime in an Aboriginal homeland, said governments should withdraw funding rather than perpetuate the cycle of abuse. There was no future in “state-funded ghettos”, he told The Weekend Australian. Asked if they should be closed down, Professor Sutton said: “No, I am talking about withdrawing funds rather than actively closing them. The fact is they are artificial communities. If they were full of white fellas, no one would dream of propping them up just because the people say they want to stay there.

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Natasha Wallace; 8/5/08

Alcohol is one of the most well-established causes of cancer and there is no safe level of consumption, the Cancer Institute NSW has concluded after an extensive analysis of worldwide research. The state government agency will today release a new report on the strong link between alcohol consumption and cancer, highlighting alarmingly high rates of risk from just two drinks a day. The institute says alcohol is particularly linked to cancer of the upper-aero digestive tract, breast, colorectum, liver and stomach. Its report, Alcohol As A Cause Of Cancer, says the risk of cancer in the upper-aero digestive tract is increased by 40 per cent (voicebox) and by 75 per cent (mouth and pharynx) from two alcoholic drinks a day.

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James Emery; 6/5/08

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the export value of Afghanistan’s opium production was about $4 billion last year, of which 24 percent went to those working at the lower to middle end of the opium chain. The bulk of the money goes to regional and international trafficking organizations that have ties with the Taliban, terrorists, and multinational criminal organizations. “Counter-narcotics is one of the key challenges,” said Ashraf Haidari, political counselor at the Embassy of Afghanistan in Washington, D.C. “I think that unless we resolve the narcotics problem, it can undo many of our achievements, especially the governance and the rule of law. Narcotics traders are corrupting everyone that is not paid well; the police primarily, but also the judicial system up to institutions that constitute the face of the government.”

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Jordan Baker; 1/5/08

Even for residents of the Block it was dramatic. More than 100 police, some in bulletproof vests, descended on the Redfern streets and stormed the crumbling houses with guns drawn as they hunted 30 heroin dealers. Redfern police collected names and photographs during a six-week undercover operation, in which they did 59 drug deals. Yesterday 17 people - not all of whom were on the police list - were arrested, including 11 women and teenage boys. “It was scary,” said one woman, who has lived in Eveleigh Street for 20 years. “We were worried about the kids in those houses. There were that many police. They surrounded the whole block. They came from everywhere. I haven’t seen anything like it.”

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Jill Stark; 28/4/08

Teenage girls with early signs of anorexia and bulimia are twice as likely to be addicted to drugs, suffer a mental illness or have an abortion as an adult, even though most do not develop serious eating disorders. A study of 2000 girls by the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne found that an alarming one in 10 females aged 15 to 17 exhibited symptoms of a serious eating disorder. Experts say the true figure is likely to be much higher because many girls are not being diagnosed, or are in denial about their illness.

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Jessica Irvine & Yuko Narushima; 28/4/08

The Rudd Government’s chief adviser on preventive health has called for an increase to the excise on tobacco of 2.5 cents a cigarette, which could raise $400 million a year on top of the $500 million to be raised from the increased excise on “alcopops”. Rob Moodie, who chairs the National Preventative Health Taskforce, said the increased excise on ready-mixed spirits - imposed at the weekend to fight teenage binge drinking - was “terrific” and should be extended to cigarettes. “Using taxation or pricing as a lever for reducing harmful consumption is a really good idea,” Dr Moodie told the Herald.

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Kerry-Anne Walsh; 27/4/08

The Rudd Government last night made a daring assault on teenage binge drinking by lifting taxes on lollypop alcohol drinks. The lightning tax change - which increased excise on “alcopop” drinks from 39.36 cents a litre to 66.67 cents - took effect as the clock struck midnight. The impact on the cost of ready-to-drink products - a soaring market aimed squarely at young drinkers - will be between 30 cents and $1.30 a drink. The move was prompted by alarming findings in the 2007 National Drug Strategy Household Survey which tracked a steep rise in drinking among teenage girls. The survey found that teenage girls bucked the norm of females having more responsible drinking habits than males.

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