Regular Drug Blog contributor, Paul Gallagher, posted an intersting new piece of research on the ADCA update list about genes and alcoholism. Worth a read.

DANA (Drug and Alcohol Nurses Australasia) have an annual conference and this time it’s in Whyhalla, South Australia and rural issues are the focus. Nursing-specific it’s not and there’s some interesting stuff on the agenda. DANA’s main website is here.

The University of Melbourne have put out the following request:

“We are writing to seek assistance in gathering literature (published or unpublished) for inclusion in an updated version of Petrol Sniffing in Aboriginal Communities: a Review of Interventions, published by the Cooperative Research Centre for Aboriginal Health in 2000.

Reflecting the available literature at the time, our review focused on petrol sniffing in remote Australian Indigenous communities. We plan to expand the scope of the Review to include information on urban volatile substance misuse (VSM) and forms of non-petrol VSM in both Indigenous and non-indigenous communities.

Much of the important literature on VSM prevention and intervention consists of unpublished reports and evaluations which are difficult for people designing policies or programs to access. We would be most grateful to be advised of any document produced by your agency or any other agency since 1999 that describes or evaluates interventions addressing any form of VSM, in order that these findings may be incorporated in the updated Review.

If your document is available in electronic version or on the Internet please let Sarah know by email how it might be accessed (smaclean@unimelb.edu.au). If you have a hard copy document we would be grateful if you would forward it to:
Sarah MacLean
Youth Research Centre
University of Melbourne
Victoria 3010

Please contact us on the following numbers if you have any questions or suggestions about the project:
Peter d’Abbs: (07) 4042 1608; 0407 720 510
Sarah MacLean (03) 8344 9642”