The National Council on Drug Abuse (NCDA) will be prioritising programmes to target alcohol, beady and ecstasy use, according to Executive Director Michael Tucker.

Mr. Tucker was speaking at a recent public forum hosted by the NCDA at Eden Gardens. A 2006 National School Survey conducted by the agency has found that more than 70 per cent of young people aged 11 to 17 have used alcohol. Another one-third have tried tobacco, one-quarter have used ganja, and about three per cent have used crack cocaine.

According to the NCDA, recent studies have shown that 187,000 Jamaicans have a drug-related condition.

In the meantime, local media and communications expert, Arlene Amitirigala, in her presentation at the forum, called on the authorities to carefully scrutinise and regulate advertising messages from com-panies seeking to promote alcohol consumption among the 18 to 24 age group.

This comes against the back-ground of her survey, which found that university students generally lack knowledge of responsible drinking guidelines.

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"The local legislative authorities should carefully scrutinise use of advertising by alcohol companies to motivate alcohol consumption," she said.

The study, which was conducted on the University of the West Indies campus during the Smirnoff Ice university tour, examined the effect of the company's 'drink responsibly' message on students aged 18-24, both in terms of increased knowledge and actual behaviour change in consumption levels.

While 74 per cent of the respondents recalled the slogan 'drink responsibly' appearing in the advertisements for the Smirnoff Ice tour, and 54 per cent agreed or strongly agreed that the tour had increased their knowledge of responsible drinking guidelines, another 53 per cent stated that it made no difference at all to the amount of alcohol they consumed on a drinking occasion.

Discussing her findings, Mrs. Amitirigala said that while the tour claimed to be educating students how to drink responsibly, but in a fun way, "there was an abundance of promotional messages and stimuli to consume alcohol, in comparison to dissemination of specific information about respon-sible drinking".