Alcoholism in Aust.

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33815, 11 April 1975, Page 9

Alcoholism in Aust.

CN.Z. Press Assn—Copyright) SYDNEY, April 10. The Australians’ reputation as heavy drinkers is under scrutiny, indications that drinking is getting out of control having grown: researchers into alcoholism say that Australia’s harddrinking tradition has become a serious national problem involving more and more people at an earlier age. Figures published recently show that Australians drank about 364 million gallons of beer and more than six million gallons of spirits last year. This, represents an increase over the previous year of 4 per cent in beer consumption and 14 per cent in the intake of spirits.

According to the director of community medicine at the St Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne. Dr Joseph Santaimaria, Australia has the high'est consumption of alcohol a head in the Englishspeaking world; and an increasing number of conferences and organisations have set out to combat alcoholism and its damaging effects on society.

The latest of these is a conference in Sydney on the prevention of alcoholism and drug-dependence, at which one of the leading speakers, Professor B. Hetzel, of Monash University, said that more than 8000 Australian men I drank at least eight beers a day, which would make them I chronic alcoholics in 15 i years. The figure, he . said, ;had doubled in 25 years, and | was still increasing. An inj creasing number of people f were problem drinkers at an earlier age simply because their parents found alcohol socially acceptable. Another speaker, Mrs 8.l Wood, a senior dietician at St Vincent’s Hospital, said studies had shown that regular drinking patterns began in the late teens and excessive drinking was established in the early twenties. Some reports, however, I indicate that drinking can) become a problem for Aus-| tralians as young as 12: years old. and a special police patrol in Canberra de-1 signed to combat delinquency there has reported many incidents involving drunken children and teenagers. One incident involved a bov, aged 15. who almost died after drinking half a bottle of whisky.

A survey last year by the National Youth Council of Australia showed that a quarter of the 1200 children interviewed throughout the country got drunk sometimes or often; and a recent survey in the state of Victoria showed that about 180,000 Victorians aged between 14 and 21 had an average of eight drinks a day.

The total cost to the community of the harmful effects of alcohol are estimated at about $ 1000 m a year. As for the control of alcoholism, researchers and other experts appear to be short of practical solutions. An imaginative idea has been put forward by Dr James Ward, a lecturer in environmental studies at Griffith University, in Queensland: writing in the I official journal of the Australian Foundation on Alco- • holism and Drug Dependence, Ihe advocates small local I hotels along the lines of the; classic British public house, to replace the widelyseparated “gin palaces” now emerging in Australian cities.. Dr Ward wants what he calls “neighbourhood hotels” to strive for “an atmosphere in which the actual drinking of alcohol takes a poor sec-, ond place to its socialising; function.”