The ease offered by the nation’s convenience stores has found to be positively associated with adolescent alcohol consumption, the authors of a study said yesterday in Taipei.
Researchers from National Taiwan University (NTU), Yang-Ming University and Academia Sinica co-authored a study published in Addiction, the journal ranked as having the most impact in the field of substance abuse research.
While publicizing the study’s results yesterday, the researchers said that the high density of convenience stores in Taiwan, while seemingly harmless, has taken its toll on how young people perceive alcohol and influenced their use of it.
“People often think substance abuse concerns the use of illicit drugs, and tend to lower their guard against alcohol, which is also an addictive substance,” said Chen Wei-jen (陳為堅), dean of the NTU’s College of Public Health and one of the study’s co-authors.
With the nation’s mixed residential and commercial neighborhoods and the “highest density of 24-hour convenience stores per person in the world,” the open display of alcohol in convenience stores, where it is sited next to non-alcoholic beverages, has made access to alcohol extremely easy for youngsters, said Chen along with Wang Shi-heng (王世亨), a post-doctorate academic from NTU’s Institute of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine.
The survey, which was conducted between 2004 and 2006, found that among senior high-school students, the percentage of teenagers who had drunk alcohol for the first time within the six months prior to the survey had increased from 13.5 percent in 2004 to 26 percent in 2006, and from 13.5 percent to 16.4 percent among junior-high school students, Chen said.
“The results of the study on the contextual influence of the availability of convenience stores on adolescent alcohol use have been found to be statistically significant,” Wang said.
“Even after adjusting for variables that might be positively correlated with recent alcohol use, such as gender, school type, school year level, truancy record, tobacco use, family situation and students’ level of disposable income we found that compared with students from a school district that has low-density convenience store distribution, the rates of recent alcohol consumption among students located in a school district with a medium or high density of convenience stores are 4 percent and 8 percent higher respectively,” Wang added.
Joyce Feng (馮燕), professor of social work at NTU and president of the Child Welfare League, advised communities to take autonomous action instead of waiting for government intervention, and suggested community volunteer groups promote awareness of the issue in their respective neighborhoods.
Feng also encouraged store vendors to highlight regulations prohibiting underage drinking in their stores to discourage alcohol consumption by underage drinkers.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching