There have been calls to increase the drinking age in the Northern Territory to 21 and introduce a floor price on alcohol.
An NT Government review of alcohol policy and legislation is currently underway, with suggestions from a number of groups that the drinking age be raised.
President of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians Dr Katherine Yelland says teenagers should not have access to alcohol.
In 2015/16 there were more than 9000 alcohol-related presentations to NT hospital emergency departments and alcohol is the second leading preventable cause of premature death next to tobacco.
The Northern Territory’s Indigenous population has the highest percentage of adults abstaining from alcohol – at 50 per cent – while the proportion of Indigenous adults at risk of long term alcohol harm has decreased in recent years and is more than ten per cent lower than for non-Indigenous adults.
(IMAGE: Flickr linmtheu)
