ASSAD Alcohol use, ever, by age group
Please note that these indicators are not currently up to date and will be replaced shortly with dashboards. In the meantime the most currently available data is available at https://www.data.act.gov.au or contact healthinfo@act.gov.au
Commentary
The prevalence of alcohol use in secondary students in the ACT has decreased steadily over time. In 2017, 63.3% of secondary students surveyed reported ever consuming at least a few sips of an alcoholic drink in their lifetime, which is significantly lower than the proportion reported in 1996 (89.7%). Alcohol use becomes more common with increasing age, with 77.6% of 16-17 year-olds having ever consumed alcohol in their lifetime compared to 56.6% of 12-15 year-olds.
The 2009 NHMRC Australian drinking guidelines recommend no alcohol consumption as the safest option for people under 18.
Please note that this indicator was updated in 2022 and replaces all previous versions.
For the purpose of reporting the Australian Secondary Students' Alcohol and Drug survey data on HealthStats, if the 95% confidence intervals of the estimates do not overlap, they are considered to be significantly different.
Chart
Ever drank alcohol, ACT Secondary Students aged 12-17 years, by age group, 1996-2017
Data
To access the data, select "View source data" link at the bottom of the visualisation. This link will open up a data table that you can download.
Codes and sources
A copy of the Australian Secondary Students' Alcohol and Drug survey can be found in Data collections.