A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
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 [...]
Would you support a change that would instantly halve children’s exposure to televised alcohol ads? New research has found that by simply changing a couple of regulations so that alcohol advertising was not allowed during sport broadcasts, and not before 9.30pm, it would halve young people’s exposure. Did you know that many children as young [...]
- The Australian Drug Foundation
I’m regularly asked about my views and concerns of school formal after-parties, particularly those where every aspect of the after-party is outsourced to a private company. I want to share with you an emerging concern for some of these parties that is particularly of interest to schools, parents and teachers. In some cases, a private company contracts a photographer and videographer as part of the after-party package. The video footage and photos are then uploaded on the company’s social [...]
Be careful what you say around your children. Photo: Janie Barrett Lately, I've noticed kids of a certain age turning into mouthpieces of their parents. It's a sudden and dramatic change and it appears, at least to my eyes, to take place sometime between their ninth and 12th birthdays. One year, they're unique [...]
"Booze becomes the antidote to too much thinking." - Alan Stokes Source: I am fighting alcohol - and losing I The Sydney Morning Herald Image from Unsplash
Around 40,000 schoolies flock to the Gold Coast each year for a well-earned celebration of 13 years of study, and thousands more head to places like Byron Bay, Bali and even Thailand. A 2012 study revealed that around three-quarters of those involved in the festivities got drunk, and a quarter of all schoolies were injured as a [...]
Since the introduction of national tobacco prevention programmes in the 1980s, Australia has experienced declining rates of youth smoking, with the latest figures showing that only 3.4% of 12-17 year-olds smoke daily. Across the wider population we have seen a dramatic shift in the way most Australians regard smoking. Recently, however, novel ways of smoking have come onto the scene which challenge some of the [...]
Repeated alcohol exposure during adolescence results in long-lasting changes in the region of the brain that controls learning and memory, according to a research team at Duke Medicine that used a rodent model as a surrogate for humans. The study, published April 27 in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, provides new insights at the [...]
Are we in the midst of an ice epidemic? Was the Prime Minister correct to say, when launching the National Ice Taskforce, that ice (methamphetamine) is our “worst drug problem” that it’s a “pernicious and evil” drug, and is “far more addictive than any other illicit drug”? Or is this another cycle of drug alarm [...]
