HOW clever are Australian teens for getting off the bottle.
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Statistics are traditionally relegated to an echelon more dastardly than lies, and even higher than damned lies, but all trends are built on numbers.
A national survey says more teenagers are giving booze the swerve with 82 per cent of kids aged 12 to 17 completely abstaining from alcohol. In 2004, this rate was apparently at 52.3 per cent.
Their first drink is also coming at a later age – usually at 16, up nearly two years since previous surveys.
Glasses have certainly been charged to lesser achievements.
In a nation where more than three-quarters of the population enjoy a tipple, there’s no doubt there’s been more than enough tenuous reasons for a toast.
Which is pretty much the problem.
More than one-in-five Australians aged 14 and over reported being a victim of an alcohol-related incident in 2016.
Don’t worry about that, it’s just those damned statistics talking.
But, news that teens are crowding on the wagon has been watered down for our region … because there is apparently no data to show what the trend is here.
That is a serious miss. The same report says people in remote areas are more likely to drink alcohol in quantities than people in cities and “drinking at risky levels increased with remoteness”.
While teens may be avoiding or delaying the use of alcohol, the question has to be asked: are they using other drugs? If the answer is yes (more than a possibility) then we need to know what they are using and take preventative action.
The management saying "you can't manage what you can't measure" is apt. If teenagers in the region are not following the trend highlighted in the report, we need to know why and affect change.
If they are simply switching to illicit drugs, we need to act.
The starting point is accurate information on the current situation.
Alcohol is in the top three contributing factors on the nation’s burden of preventable disease. It is also persistently misused and a cause of anti-social behaviour.
If our teens are being more responsible about alcohol it is certainly to be applauded.
But, let’s have the local facts so the community can respond with appropriate support and measures.