An archive of recent news articles on the topic of alcohol and drugs.
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Girls top schools' booze league
18th August 2010
Schoolgirls are hitting the booze harder than ever, and even the very young are drinking, according to the Education Ministry. And worried teachers say Monday-morning hangovers after students' booze-fuelled weekends are stopping them learning. Children as young as seven and eight have been disciplined over alcohol-related matters, and teachers said binge-drinking was so bad that some students were still suffering in the classroom when they returned to school after partying away the weekend.
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Parents horrified by binge-drinking culture
17th August 2010
Amy-Rose Allen was a beauty show contestant with a not-so-hidden - and ultimately fatal - secret. The 22-year-old alcoholic fell victim to what her parents described yesterday as New Zealand's "widely accepted" binge-drinking culture. Three months ago, her life support was switched off after she was partially flung from the car she was driving drunk in a crash south of Morrinsville
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Conscience vote will decide drinking age
17th August 2010
Raising the drinking age from 18 to 20 will be a conscience vote for the National Party. However, the legislation around alcohol reform has not yet been released. Justice Minister Simon Power said the legislation was due to have its first reading before Christmas. A report from the Law Commission released in April which made 153 recommendations on reducing the harm caused by alcohol, including tax increases and a wide-reaching tightening of rules around the sale of alcohol.
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Big majority for lower alcohol limit
12th August 2010
Almost two-thirds of New Zealanders support lowering the drink-driving limit, a survey has revealed. The Colmar-Brunton poll, commissioned by One News, comes two weeks after the Government decided not to cut the amount of alcohol adults are allowed before they can drive. It also follows a Weekend Herald experiment which showed a male photographer was able to drink nine bottles of beer and a female reporter five 100ml glasses of wine and legally drive home, despite feeling drunk.
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Pilot grounded in drugs, drink inquiry
12th August 2010
An airline pilot has been grounded and is under investigation after allegations of alcohol and drug abuse, including the suspected supply of an illegal substance to a female cabin attendant. The woman, who is understood to have collapsed outside the pilot's home, was taken to hospital after a party in which the pilot allegedly distributed herbal pills and alcohol to his guests. Although the Red Alert pills were natural herbal products and not illegal, police began an investigation after the Class C-controlled drug benzylpiperazine (BZP) was found in her system.
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Girl's 6-floor city plunge
11th August 2010
A North Shore 18-year-old is lucky to be alive after falling multiple storeys from a central Auckland carpark building during a night of drinking and taking Ecstasy. Friends say she fell six or seven storeys and is in Auckland City Hospital with breaks in her vertebrae, a punctured lung and three broken ribs. But doctors say she will walk again. The young woman comes from a well-off Devonport family, and last night her parents spoke of the help they had tried to get her for the drugs they believe she was taking daily.
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Users rate Ecstasy brands on website
11th August 2010
Ecstasy dealers are competing "like Pepsi and Coke" to sell their drugs, says the head of the New Zealand Drug Foundation, and users are rating their experiences on the web. The foundation says it is closely monitoring an international website called Pill Reports, where Kiwis are uploading photos and comments about the Ecstasy tablets they take. Executive director Ross Bell's comments come after an 18-year-old North Shore girl fell six or seven storeys from a carpark building in central Auckland on Thursday morning after a night drinking and taking Ecstasy. She is recovering in Auckland City Hospital.
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12-year-old drug dealer stuns school
10th August 2010
A drug dealing 12-year-old took a kilogram of cannabis to sell to his mates at an intermediate school. The kid with the stash, worth about $7000, was busted when his friends at Auckland's Manurewa Intermediate were caught smoking some of the cannabis. The 12-year-old had been given the drugs by a family member to sell at school. The incident underlines a worrying trend of drug use by intermediate and primary school pupils, which is borne out in the latest statistics.
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Study 'supports need to keep tobacco hidden'
10th August 2010
A study linking shop tobacco displays to increased smoking experimentation by young people reinforces the need to legislate the products out of sight, an anti-tobacco group says. After the Government previously refused to ban retail displays, officials are now considering afresh whether to recommend the policy, one which tobacco control researchers say would be important in reducing New Zealand's smoking rate. The study, published in the journal Pediatrics, found in California that exposure to tobacco displays and advertising at convenience, liquor and small grocery stores was a risk factor for young people taking up smoking.
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Cricket boss lashes drunk All Black fans
5th August 2010
New Zealand Cricket boss Justin Vaughan has denounced the behaviour of drunk All Black fans at last weekend's Bledisloe Cup test, saying their antics spoiled the occasion and were symptomatic of wider alcohol problems. Vaughan was dismayed by a section of New Zealanders at Melbourne's Etihad Stadium who hurled abuse at Wallaby fans throughout the match. In an opinion piece in today's Herald, Vaughan says he "was embarrassed to be a New Zealander at the ground on Saturday night, surrounded as I was by a good number of drunk, aggressive, and obnoxious All Black supporters".
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