The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare: “Australia’s Youth” report

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) have recently released a report titled “Australia's Youth”. The report uses a wide range of data sources to compile a detailed account of the current wellbeing of young Australians (12 to 24) and provides comparisons of how trends have changed since the early 2000s. 

The chapters on alcohol, tobacco and other drugs highlight some positive downward trends in 14 to 24 year olds from 2001 to 2019. This includes single occasion risky drinking (at least monthly), dropping substantially from 47% to 30%. Daily smoking has dropped by over half at 19.3% to 6.8%, and recent illicit drug use is down from 32% to 24%. There are some limitations with this sort of data including that certain population groups (e.g. homeless, incarcerated or young people in out of home care etc) and those in certain geographical locations (e.g. rural, remote etc) may not be included.

Go to the AIHW’s “Australia’s Youth” report.