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• Investigates relational enactments of gendered alcohol consumption during the pandemic, contrasted with special attention on women as a 'priority population' for alcohol-related harm reduction. • Adopts a gendered approach to understanding the alcohol-harm paradox, the breast cancer paradox, and the risk-pleasure paradox in women's health policies. • Synthesises evidence to construct a burden of proof that problematising women's consumption at an individual level alone has potential to worsen inequities in gendered alcohol-related harms and broader health outcomes. • Showcases how gender-responsive alcohol policy needs to be cross-sectoral and address upstream factors to protect women from alcohol harm. Drinking alcohol facilitates pleasure for women while also elevating disease risk. Symbolic expectations of what alcohol 'does in' life per lay insight (relax, identity-work, connect) sit in tension with scientific realities about what alcohol 'does to' women's bodies (elevate chronic disease risks such as breast cancer). Policy must work amidst – and despite – these paradoxes to reduce harm(s) to women by attending to the gendered and emergent configurations of both realities. This paper applies a logic of candidacy to explore women's alcohol consumption and pleasure through candidacies of wellness in addition to risk through candidacies of disease (e.g. breast cancer). Using qualitative data collected via 56 interviews with Australian women (n = 48) during early pandemic countermeasures, we explore how risk perceptions attached to alcohol (like breast cancer) co-exist with use-values of alcohol in daily life and elucidate alcohol's paradoxical role in women's heuristics of good/poor health behaviours. Women were aged 25–64 years, experienced varying life circumstances (per a multidimensional measure of social class including economic, social and cultural capital) and living conditions (i.e. partnered/single, un/employed, children/no children). We collated coding structures from data within both projects; used deductive inferences to understand alcohol's paradoxical role in candidacies of wellness and disease; abductively explored women's prioritisation of co-existing candidacies during the pandemic; and retroductively theorised prioritisations per evolving pandemic-inflected constructions of alcohol-related gendered risk/s and pleasure/s. Our analysis illuminates the ways alcohol was configured as a pleasure and form of wellness in relation to stress, productivity and respectability. It also demonstrates how gender was relationally enacted amidst the priorities, discourses and materialities enfolding women's lives during the pandemic. We consider the impact of policy regulation of aggressive alcohol marketing and banal availability of alcohol in pandemic environments and outline gender-responsive, multi-level policy options to reduce alcohol harms to women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Hello Sunday Morning (HSM) is an online program that encourages people to commit to a period of non-drinking and blog about their experiences. The purpose of this paper is to explore how HSM members negotiated their periods of abstention, with a focus on how not drinking influenced their narratives of selfhood.Methods: Thematic analysis was undertaken of 2844 blog posts from 154 Victorians who signed up to HSM in 2013 or 2014.Results: Analysis revealed three key narratives of selfhood offered by participants: (1) abstinence resulting in a disrupted sense of self, (2) non-consumption facilitating the development of a new healthy self, and (3) anti-consumption facilitating the development of a resistant self.Conclusion: Individuals construct and maintain their sense of self through consumption (or non-consumption) activities, and this occurs within the broader context of the relationship between selfhood, consumption and culture. HSM members developed narratives of self by drawing on a range of wider discursive structures concerning pleasure, healthism and resistance. The typologies of non-drinking selves identified in this paper could be disseminated through platforms such as HSM to support people who are new to non-drinking in choosing how they might construct and enact alternative selfhoods in contexts where alcohol consumption is deeply embedded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Harmful alcohol consumption contributes to poorer health for all people. For Indigenous Peoples of Australia, Canada, and New Zealand alcohol impacts their wellbeing significantly, this is partially explained by both their experiences of colonisation and the resulting impact on structural and social determinants of health. Indigenous Peoples have a recognised right to self-determination, which includes their right to contribute to policy decisions that affect them. This right is based on international recognition and principles, and acknowledgement of historical culture and law. The aim of this narrative review is to examine the processes of inclusion of Indigenous Peoples in policy development processes for evidence of self-determination to inform alcohol policy development.Methods: Ninety-eight peer-reviewed journal articles were identified through four databases. Twenty papers describing the inclusion of Indigenous Peoples in policy development processes were included; one focusing on alcohol. Two authors reviewed and coded the papers by four domains of Indigenous inclusion in policy processes: Indigenous representation; method of inclusion; reasons for inclusion; and stage of inclusion.Results: There is no single model for the integration of self-determination into policy. However, the nature of participation is key in ensuring that Indigenous Peoples' self-determination is recognised. While all the papers reported Indigenous Peoples being included in processes, there was little evidence of self-determination.Conclusions: Self-determination is a right, and critical to effective policy and action. The inclusion of Indigenous Peoples in policy development alone is not self-determination; however, creating the conditions that ensures Indigenous Peoples have influence throughout policy processes is one integral component of self-determination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Pre-drinking is often defined as an economically-minded set of drinking practices engaged in prior to attending public entertainment areas, such as licensed venues. This paper explores motivations and practical considerations that a sample of teenagers describes as significant to 'pre-drinking', despite not attending licensed premises during their most recent risky drinking session.Methods: Data were derived from the mixed-methods Young Australians Alcohol Reporting System (YAARS) project. 16 participants aged 16-19 were identified as pre-drinking on their most recent risky drinking session, followed by subsequent alcohol consumption in non-licensed venues. 4 members of this subsample also undertook qualitative interviews.Results: These data expand on existing understandings of pre-drinking by emphasising the breadth of motivations and practical considerations understood to shape both pre-drinking practices, and subsequent drinking in other public entertainment areas. These primarily included desires for personal enhancement and experiencing freedom over restriction, the dynamics of accessing alcohol and private space, the necessity of opportunism, and concerns regarding parents and other authority figures.Conclusions: Analyses of groups obscured by dominant definitions of what constitutes 'pre-drinking' illuminate a broader range of motivations and concerns facing young people who drink. Such findings enhance our understanding of young people's drinking practices, the terminology used to describe them, and the development of relevant policies and interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In June 2012 DMAA (1,3-dimethylamylamine), an ephedrine-like vasoconstricting substance which had been included in many popular sports supplements, became a scheduled substance in Australia, following bans in several other countries. The underlying rationale for this ban was that DMAA use is unsafe. This paper aimed to critically review the available evidence on the acute and/or long-term harms of DMAA. Using five research databases (PubMed, Embase, ProQuest Health and Medical Complete, and Web of Science) and the key terms 'methylhexaneamine', 'DMAA', 'dimethylamylamine', '1,3-dimethylpentylamine' and '2-amino-4-methylhexane', 842 articles were identified once duplicates removed. Sixteen studies met the inclusion criteria and were included in the review. Of the included studies, eight were case studies, which reported on eight patients who presented to emergence departments. All were retrospective in their reporting. The patients displayed various outcomes; while the patients were presenting with serious problems, in most patients conditions subsided on cessation of supplement use. The remaining eight experimental studies were low powered, with a number of studies conducted by a single research group with industry ties, and broadly investigated the effects of DMAA on physiological outcomes. Mixed findings were apparent, although escalations of blood pressure were present on acute dosing, as well as decreases in measures of body weight and body fat. There is a shallow evidence base describing the adverse effects of DMAA and the dose above which such effects may occur. The scheduling of DMAA in many countries may now impede research efforts to determine whether there are safe doses at which DMAA can be consumed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Environmental factors inside licensed venues have been found to influence the intoxication levels and consumption practices of patrons. The consumption of alcohol mixed with energy drinks (AmED) occurs primarily at or prior to attending licensed venues, however there is a lack of in situ research investigating AmED use in these contexts. Given that AmED use has been linked with increased alcohol consumption, intoxication, illicit substance use, and risk taking behaviours, this paper explores the environmental correlates and levels of intoxication associated with AmED use in licensed venues.Methods: Structured observations were undertaken in five Australian cities on Friday and Saturday nights. Covert teams spent 4-5h in venues and recorded hourly observations on patron, venue, and staff characteristics, alcohol, illicit drug and AmED consumption patterns and intoxication levels.Results: 898 hourly observations were recorded across 68 venues. All but one venue served energy drinks, and patron AmED use was observed during 34.9% of hourly records. AmED use was more prevalent after 12am and in nightclub venues compared to bars and pubs, and was positively associated with high intoxication levels, illicit drug use, and younger crowds. After controlling for environmental factors (i.e. venue crowding, service practices, venue characteristics, patron demographics and behaviour) AmED use did not predict high intoxication at a venue level in multivariable models.Conclusion: AmED consumption is ubiquitous in the licensed venues of Australian night-time entertainment districts, particularly busy nightclub venues where intoxication and risky consumption are heightened. However, AmED use was not associated with high patron intoxication when environmental factors were considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Price-based policies are effective alcohol harm minimisation policy options. This paper examines public support for price-based policies based on patterns of consumption and expenditure, to determine if the extent to which an individual may be affected by a policy influences their support.Methods: The current study included 1,684 Australian residents (59.8% male, Mage 43.8 [SD=16.7]). Respondents who purchased and consumed alcohol in the past six months were asked about their support for potential changes in a series of price-based policies.Results: Increasing price was less likely to be supported than either implementing a minimum price or a tax-increase earmarked to pay for alcohol harms. Increasing price and taxing drinkers were more likely to be supported by older people and women. We found no relationship between income or perceived impact of price increases on purchasing and level of support.Conclusion: Contrary to the idea that public support might be partly influenced by ability to pay for alcohol, support for a minimum unit price was not related to price paid per drink or income, only amount consumed. Thus, heavier drinkers may be inherently unlikely to support price-based policies even when these policies would have little impact on their actual purchasing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]