Drug and alcohol review
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Drug and alcohol review · Mar 2012
Responses to risk: public submissions on Australian alcohol guidelines for low-risk drinking.
In 2007 the National Health and Medical Research Council issued the draft of the revised Australian alcohol guidelines. The document presented guidelines explicitly in terms of risk. This paper seeks to explore the public response to this document by analysing the submissions received during the 60 day period for public feedback. ⋯ The diversity of views expressed seems to have had little effect in the revision of the guidelines. Disseminating the low-risk drinking guidelines message poses many challenges.
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Drug and alcohol review · Mar 2012
My cup runneth over: young people's lack of knowledge of low-risk drinking guidelines.
If young people are to consume alcohol in accordance with government guidelines, they must possess the relevant knowledge and skills. No previous research has examined correlations between different forms of knowledge of alcohol guidelines or how they are related to personality variables and beliefs. ⋯ Many young people may lack the knowledge required to monitor their alcohol consumption or give accurate self-reports in research. Future research should evaluate using a drink-pouring task as part of interventions designed to improve knowledge and skills and encourage moderate consumption of alcohol.
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Drug and alcohol review · Mar 2012
ReviewDifferent guidelines for different countries? On the scientific basis of low-risk drinking guidelines and their implications.
The scientific evidence for low-risk drinking guidelines was examined in a narrative review focusing on three points: definition of exposure, the best way to select outcomes and risk relations and how to determine thresholds. With respect to exposure, at least two dimensions should be incorporated: average volume of alcohol consumption and patterns of irregular heavy drinking occasions. ⋯ Finally, our plea is for establishing a general threshold for acceptable risk on a societal level rather than ad hoc specific committees setting norms for specific risks. Acceptable thresholds will be different if the risk is to oneself or to others.
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Drug and alcohol review · Mar 2012
An empirical approach to evaluating the validity of alternative low-risk drinking guidelines.
This paper proposes an approach for evaluating the validity of alternative low-risk drinking guidelines. ⋯ This paper supported gender-specific daily limits and suggested that optimal guidelines might take daily limits from analyses of concurrent harms and weekly limits from analyses of prospective harms. This paper illustrates a mechanism for validating the ability of low-risk drinking guidelines to accurately predict a range of alcohol-related harms, whereby countries could use their own data on consumption and its association with harm to evaluate their low-risk drinking guidelines
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Drug and alcohol review · Mar 2012
Perceptions of low-risk drinking levels among Australians during a period of change in the official drinking guidelines.
In 2009, the National Health and Medical Research Council released a revision of Australia's official low-risk alcohol guidelines, specifying low-risk consumption levels for both short- and long-term consumption. This study aims to assess how the general population's assessment of low-risk drinking levels compares to these guidelines and to examine whether the changes to the official guidelines corresponded with changes in perceptions of low-risk drinking levels in the population. ⋯ There is very little knowledge of the official drinking guidelines among the general Australian population. If drinking guidelines are to have any effect on levels of consumption, a more concerted effort to publicise them is necessary.