Pharmaceutical drug misuse: are industry of employment and occupation risk factors?

We explore the misuse of pharmaceutical drugs in the Australian workforce, focusing on whether any differences exist between workers in particular industries or occupations. In terms of industry, being employed in hospitality is positively associated with pharmaceutical drug misuse, while being employed in finance, insurance and retail is inversely related. In terms of occupation, we find that being a labourer is positively related to misuse of pharmaceutical drugs, while being employed in managerial, professional, sales, clerical or administrative roles is associated with a lower tendency. Further analysis of occupational effects revealed that being in a blue-collar occupation, as a whole, is positively related to pharmaceutical drug misuse relative to white-collar employment. Moreover, being employed in higher status roles is associated with a lower likelihood of such behaviour. Our findings imply that particular workplace pressures, cultural norms and/or working conditions might be influential factors behind workers' drug misuse

What Do the Bingers Drink? Micro-Unit Evidence on Negative Externalities and Drinker Characteristics of Alcohol Consumption by Beverage Types*

The recent debate on alcohol tax reform, recommendations from the national preventative health task force and from the Henry Tax Review in Australia have highlighted the need for quantifying externalities of excessive alcohol consumption by beverage types. This paper presents microlevel information from the Australian National Drug Strategy Household Surveys to examine the association between risky drinking behaviour, drinker characteristics, health and labour market status, and types of alcohol beverages consumed. Drinkers of regular-strength beer (RSB) and ready-to-drink spirits in a can (RTDC) have the highest incidences of heavy bingeing, whereas low-alcohol beer, fortified wine or bottled wine drinkers are least likely. Bottled spirits, RSB and RTDC are most likely to be linked to risky behaviour such as property damage, stealing, and verbal and physical abuse under alcohol influence. All three spirit products are overwhelmingly the favourable drinks for the underage and young drinkers. Risky drinking behaviour is not found to be associated with the alcohol strength of the products. Copyright (c) 2010 The Economic Society of Australia.

Demand for Marijuana, Alcohol and Tobacco: Participation, Levels of Consumption, and Cross-Equation Correlations

We investigated marijuana, alcohol and tobacco consumption using micro-unit data from the Australian National Drug Strategy Household Surveys. We estimated a multivariate probit (MVP) model to allow for correlations across participations of different drugs and a sequential model to study separately the determinants of participation and the levels of consumption. The MVP results indicate significant and positive correlations across all three drugs through unobservable charac- teristics, with the correlation coefficient between marijuana and tobacco being the highest. The MVP approach allows for better prediction of conditional and joint probabilities, providing valuable information for policy makers in a multidrug framework

Can harms associated with high-intensity drinking be reduced by increasing the price of alcohol?

Introduction and Aims: Increasing the price of alcohol is consistently shown to reduce the average level of consumption. However, the evidence for the effect of increasing the price on high-intensity drinking is both limited and equivocal. The aim of this analysis is to estimate the effect of changes in price on patterns of consumption. Design and Methods: Self-reported patterns of alcohol consumption and demographic data were obtained from the Australian National Drug Strategy Household Surveys, conducted in 2001, 2004 and 2007. A pooled three-stage least-squares estimator was used to simultaneously model the impact of the price on the frequency (measured in days) of consuming no, low, moderate and high quantities of alcohol. Results: A 1% increase in the price of alcohol was associated with a statistically significant increase of 6.41 days per year on which no alcohol is consumed (P ≤ 0.049), and a statistically significant decrease of 7.30 days on which 1–4 standard drinks are consumed (P ≤ 0.021). There was no statistically significant change for high or moderate-intensity drinking. Conclusions: For Australia, and countries with a similar pattern of predominant high-intensity drinking, taxation policies that increase the price of alcohol and are very efficient at decreasing harms associated with reduced average consumption may be relatively inefficient at decreasing alcohol harms associated with high-intensity drinking