CANBERRA, Aug. 15 (Xinhua) -- Middle-aged Australians are most likely to consume excessive amounts of alcohol than any other age group, and one in six people surveyed said they had recently used illicit drugs, a government agency has found.
According to The Australian on Wednesday, an Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) report found that Australians aged between 55 and 74 years were most likely to drink to excess, defined by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) as more than four standard drinks on a single occasion.
However, the proportion of the population regularly drinking to excess fell from 18.2 percent in 2013 to 17.1 percent in 2016.
Almost one quarter of Australians identified as non-drinkers while the number of people who smoked tobacco daily fell to 12.2 percent.
According to the report, approximately one out of every six people surveyed over the age of 14 said they had recently used illicit substances.
Marijuana was the most common illegal drug with 10.4 percent of respondents admitting to recently using the substance.
Methamphetamine, commonly known as ice, was identified as being of the most concern to the community for the first time with 39.8 percent of respondents picking it ahead of alcohol abuse (28.4 percent) and tobacco smoking (9.4 percent).
Since the government declared war on ice use in 2015, the rate of use has dropped from 2.1 percent of the population in 2013 to 1.4 percent in 2016, according to the AIHW.
However, that finding was contrary to the results of the latest National Wastewater Analysis Drug Monitoring Program report, released in April, which identified ice as the most popular illicit drug excluding cannabis.
MDMA use has also fallen since 2013 but cocaine use rose from 2.1 to 2.5 percent of the population.
