An archive of recent news articles on the topic of alcohol and drugs.
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Alcohol kids' worst enemy
20th March 2012
ALCOHOL is fast becoming the No. 1 threat facing Australian children and there is no adequate system in place to stop them being exposed to alcohol advertising, Australia's foremost child health expert, Fiona Stanley, says. The former Australian of the Year will chair a new alternative alcohol advertising review body, which health experts say is needed because the industry-based code is failing to protect children.
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Pot luck in Nelson cannabis haul
19th March 2012
Police have wound up their annual cannabis recovery operation, saying the number of plants found is down on last year as the more serious growers are taking their operations indoors. Sergeant Wayne Corbett, of Nelson, said police spent the past week working with the Royal New Zealand Air Force as part of the national cannabis recovery exercise, dubbed Operation Kelly. Police recovered 2700 plants in Nelson, Motueka, Blenheim and Golden Bay and used 13 search warrants in the week-long operation. Mr Corbett said six firearms were found and two people would have their firearms licences revoked.
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Alcohol guideline for pregnant women
19th March 2012
Is it okay to drink a little during pregnancy? It seems many Kiwi women think so. It is hoped a new resource for health professionals will help them teach women what is safe. The Pregnancy and Alcohol Cessation Toolkit is an online resource to give health professionals guidelines when educating pregnant women about the dangers of alcohol. The toolkit consists of four modules linked to other resources, clinical scenarios, self evaluation questionnaires and survey feedback, and can be used with any continuing professional education programme.
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Higher booze tax doesn't faze students
15th March 2012
Cranking up the excise on alcohol won't be enough to get binge-drinking university students off the sauce, according to an AUT University study. In the first local study of its kind, researchers tested how much money Australian and New Zealand students were prepared to pay for alcohol. The results showed that students were happy to pay higher prices for the same number of drinks, and would simply buy more if the strength of the alcohol was reduced. "In this particular piece of research, the price was increased by as much as 25 per cent, with no significant change," said Andrew Parsons, associate professor of retailing at AUT.
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Gerald Waters: What to do about repeat drink drivers
15th March 2012
I read with interest the article "rehab versus prison for criminals" in the Weekend Herald on the introduction of drug courts to New Zealand and the role of victims of crime in the in the sentencing of those who have caused distress or harm to them. Two years ago a family friend was killed by a repeat drink driver. The driver had seventeen previous convictions and nearly one hundred other drink or drug related crimes. I felt that our friend's death was avoidable and so started to research in depth the history of the driver and his contact with the criminal justice system. I investigated how repeat offenders whose offending was alcohol or other drug related were dealt with more effectively in other parts of the world.
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'Legal high' may contain illegal ingredient
14th March 2012
A drug marketed as a "legal high" is believed to contain an illegal ingredient. Dime, a white powder that is sold in a capsule, has been advertised as an “amazing mood amplifier”, and a mix between ecstasy and LSD “yet completely legal”. But the National Drug Intelligence Bureau has launched an investigation into the synthetic drug, believing it may contain a type of Class C controlled substance known as 2CE. Drugs that fall into Class C of the Misuse of Drugs Act are banned. TVNZ's Close Up programme had the drug tested by Environmental Science and Research, which confirmed to the show that it contained 25C-NBOMe, another Class C substance.
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Babies and elderly suffering from 'poison' dope
14th March 2012
Babies are swallowing cannabis left lying around by their parents, calls to the National Poisons Centre show. Last year the centre received 166 calls from people about adverse reactions from recreational drugs. Among them were calls about children and babies as young as eight months who had swallowed cannabis in their homes. The centre says cannabis oil in particular has caused problems. The children became drowsy and would sometimes vomit, toxicologist Leo Schep said. "Like everything that is loosely lying around, they will put it in their mouth and if it's a liquid, will drink it." Side effects could be serious, he said, with the risk of coma and depression of the respiratory and central nervous systems. The centre advises that all children who have ingested cannabis be admitted to a hospital emergency department where they can be treated with activated charcoal to try to negate the effects.
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Smoking unaffordable and uncool, say teenagers
7th March 2012
Smoking has become unaffordable and uncool for many teenagers, according to a new survey which shows the habit declining among the young. The annual Action on Smoke and Health (ASH) smoking survey 2010/2011, released today, shows smoking among 14- and 15-year-olds at its lowest since the survey began in 1999, and recorded the largest annual decline in daily smoking by youths since 2003/2004. The Year 10 ASH Snapshot survey, sampling about half of all Year 10 students across the country, is the largest of its kind.
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Youth smokers fall to 8.2% low
6th March 2012
Youth smoking has fallen to an 8.2 per cent low, with many saying they can't afford the habit, according to a survey. Key findings from the annual survey by anti-smoking group Ash indicate youth smoking rates have fallen across all ethnic groups, especially among Maori students, whose percentage of regular smokers dropped from 20.9 to 18.1 between 2010 and last year. Ash has sampled about half of New Zealand's Year 10 smokers each year since 1999. The Ash survey also revealed a significant rise in students who had never smoked, up from 64.3 per cent in 2010 to 70.4 per cent last year.
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Editorial: Drug courts must not forget victims
6th March 2012
Addiction to alcohol and other drugs is behind so much of the crime in countries such as New Zealand that a specialist court for addicts could radically change our system of criminal justice. Two such courts will be set up in Auckland this year on an experimental basis for four to five years. The results will be watched with interest. They will aim to cure addicted offenders rather than simply punish them, which is a fine objective but so is justice. At a conference in Auckland last week our judges, lawyers and drug treatment agencies heard from their counterparts in the United States where specialist drug courts have been operating for 20 years and appear to have produced a decline in repeat offences. A key to their success, the visitors said, was dispensing with the adversarial positions of prosecutor and defender. Both sides would join forces with the judge to arrange a rehabilitation programme.
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