New Zealand needs to address its serious alcohol problem, says an Otago University professor who is holding a public meeting on the Shore. Doug Sellman, a professor of psychiatry and addiction medicine, says at least 700,000 Kiwis are heavy drinkers. “New  Zealand is paying a heavy price through deaths, injuries, chronic diseases, police apprehensions and overburdened emergency departments,….

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The government’s fierce war against alcohol has taken a different dimension. When they started, the government said alcohol drinking was a vice that perpetuates social moral turpitude. That was then, but now they have raised the pitch, zoning in on the face of poverty, a feature that continues to define a significant section of our….

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Homeless, alcoholic and hopeless, Dan Oller arrived last year at the Charlotte Rescue Mission, skeptical that its addiction treatment program could help him when 11 others had not. “There’s always that doubt in your mind, once you’ve failed over and over,” said Oller, who started drinking and doing drugs when he was 12. “I was….

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One for the Road, the real-life story of a journalist’s battle with alcohol, sparks debate over the country’s self-image as a nation of moderate wine-lovers The posters, on hoardings across France, show a slightly dishevelled media executive in his 50s, on a jetty, a bag in his hand, a Swiss lake behind, staring with vacant,….

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Binge drinking is more likely to be caused by parental example than allowing a teenager a glass of wine with a meal, according to the head of York’s youth offending team. The comments of Simon Page come after the Government’s chief medical advisor, Sir Liam Donaldson, said under 15s should drink no alcohol whatsoever and….

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