Alarm bells on young boozers
Young WA men are drinking on average 16 standard drinks on a big night, according to alarming figures that confirm the State's reputation for binge drinking.
A survey of more than 4250 adult drinkers found that 77 per cent qualified as binge drinkers by having five drinks or more in a single session, with men aged 18 to 30 without a tertiary education the heaviest drinkers.
Even across the whole sample, people notched up an average of 11 standard drinks on a big drinking occasion.
The results, from a Healthway-funded study of attitudes to health warnings on alcohol, were released ahead of today's launch of the WA Cancer Prevention Research Unit, jointly funded by Curtin University's faculty of health sciences and the Cancer Council of WA.
Curtin professor Simone Pettigrew, who will head the unit, said the findings were timely and confirmed many West Australians were binge drinkers who drank far more than recommended levels.
"This was part of a bigger study but it gave us a chance to see who's drinking what, and it was in a big group where we were confident we had a really good mix of drinkers across both genders," she said.
"Across the whole group, the average number of standard drinks on their heaviest drinking times was 11, which constitutes a very high risk, and that's the average so for some it was a lot more.
"And it's even higher again in younger males."
Professor Pettigrew said drinking patterns in WA were polarised because more people were abstaining from alcohol or drinking at very light levels but many of those who were drinking were doing so at very harmful levels.
Apart from other health concerns, excessive drinking increased the risk of getting cancer, which was still not widely understood.
"With things like heart disease, people tend to be more aware of the risk factors and what they can do to prevent it, but there are so many different types of cancer and there is a lot of fear about hereditary factors and people aren't sure how they can prevent it," she said.
"That's why we need consistent, user-friendly messages we can convey to the public."
Cancer Council WA education and research director Terry Slevin said the unit was important because more than 11,000 cases of cancer were diagnosed in WA each year, with a least a third of them preventable.
