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The article offers the authors' comments on reforming alcohol taxation in Australia. According to the authors, alcohol and related industries reserve their greatest hostility for proposals to reform alcohol taxation. They state that though there is a good understanding of the flaws in the alcohol taxation system in Australia more scholarly work in the area is required to find solutions.

The aim of this paper is to describe a new comprehensive approach to studying illicit drug policy - one that integrates evidence, disciplinary approaches, drug use behaviours and policy making processes. The methods described here include systematic reviews of the evidence, studies of the ways in which policy decision-making actually occurs, and the use of modelling approaches that can explicate the multi-dimensional nature of drug policy responses and their dynamic interactions. The approach described has the potential to facilitate new drug policy that would not have been possible or apparent through the sole study of one aspect of drug policy, such as the evidence-base or the political context or the economics of drug markets. We believe this approach may be more likely to produce strategic drug policy because it reflects the richness and complexity of the real world of drug use, and drug policy. The purpose of employing an integrative methodology is to create the potential for new drug policy insights, ideas and interventions - not restricted to one body of evidence, nor to accidental or fortuitous policy-making processes. [Ritter A, Bammer G, Hamilton M, Mazerolle L, The DPMP Team. Effective drug policy: a new approach demonstrated in the Drug Policy Modelling Program. Drug Alcohol Rev 2007;26:] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The alcohol consumption of a systematically sampled population of women from an Australian inner-urban community was measured using the AUDIT (Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test) in three different ways to produce varying estimations of hazardous and harmful drinking. The study was located in an area in which there is a high density of licensed premises and its female population contains large numbers of women who are young, students and professionals and thus considered to be potentially risky drinkers. Five hundred and twenty-five women returned completed questionnaires giving a response rate of 74%. Using an AUDIT score of eight as the cut-off point, 21% of women were classified as being at risk of having problems associated with their alcohol consumption. These women were more likely than women who scored less than eight to be beer drinkers, to drink at licensed premises and drink with male and female friends. An association between higher AUDIT scores and being unmarried was found. This paper argues that investigating the social and contextual factors associated with women's potentially problematic drinking can promote more effective community-based interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]