Australian teenagers continue to drink alcohol at alarming rate: study

Australian teenagers are continuing to binge drink' and regularly consume alcohol at an alarming rate, a new study has found.

Australian teenage boys aged between 16 and 19 were consuming 17 standard drinks in a typical six-hour binge.

Girls of the same age, while exhibiting less extreme behaviour, were also in dangerous territory, consuming 14 standard drinks in the same period, says the study.

The study was undertaken by Melbourne's Monash University with Perth's Curtin University and the University of New South Wales.

It says that while the binge drinking rate amongst Australian teenagers has declined, it is still far too high.

Of the study's participants, almost half admitted to riding in a car with a drunk driver, 18 percent regretted impulsive behavior while drunk, 11 percent ended up in a hospital's emergency ward and 10 percent lost consciousness.

"While we have been witnessing more abstinence in young people, we have not seen a decline in arrivals at the emergency departments," Tina Lam from Curtin University told News Limited on Monday.

"It is concerning that there is a group of teens who are still putting themselves at substantial risk.

"It is a worry that we found quite a number of teenagers were showing an indication of alcohol dependence."

The authors of the study said that the earlier people begin drinking, the greater their risk of alcohol-related health complications later in life.

"It is clear that this population is not only at risk by virtue of their regular consumption of high alcohol quantities, but due to their experience of concrete, acute consequences and greater likelihood of possible dependence," the authors wrote in the study, published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, on Monday. Endit