College and drinking: province spending $400,000 to encourage dialogue

The B.C. government is giving post-secondary institutions $400,000 for a project to address drinking on campus.

The Centre for Addictions Research at the University of Victoria is leading the project and will use the investment to facilitate dialogue between students about the effects of drinking, centre director Dan Reist says.

• Talks with kids about binge drinking should start early, doctors say
• Student drinking still concern on campus
• Underage drinking turns off UBC pub taps

"Too often, I think the issue is we don't think about our decisions around alcohol," he told On The Coast host Stephen Quinn.

"What we want to do is get people to raise their level of intentionality around these things think about the choices they make, and make those choices a little more consciously."

Reist says he wants people to make decisions around drinking that don't lead to unintended consequences.

In a press release, the Ministry of Health noted that 39 per centof post-secondary students who drank alcohol last year said they regretted something they did when drinking.

Reist says the funding from the provincial government will be used on a variety of special dialogue projects, including Selkirk College's Dinner Baskets Conversations. The program gives studentsa basket of food tocook and eattogether, while they discuss their feelings on drug and alcohol use.

To hearthe full story, click the audio labelled:Province to spend $400,000 on dialogue projects related to drinking on campus