Alcohol Damage

Catherine Ellis, reporter

CATHERINE ELLIS, REPORTER: People who've had too much alcohol to drink can look pretty silly.

They have trouble walking, speaking, seeing, their memory gets foggy, they have slowed reaction times and they struggle to make decisions.

All this puts them at greater risk of getting into fights or having accidents.

CATHERINE, REPORTER: And this is what causes all the problems - pure alcohol. It's what you find in beer, wine and other alcoholic drinks. It looks just like water so why does it have such a big affect on us?

Lets take a look inside for a moment.

Alcohol skips the normal digestive process.

It just sneaks straight through the walls of the stomach and small intestine and into the blood stream where it gets pumped right throughout the body affecting almost every part within minutes.

And it totally freaks out the brain.

You see the brain is made up of billionsof tiny nerve cells, which send messages to each other and around the body - telling us how to move, what to say and what to do.

But alcohol interferes with the communication between the cells and that's why people's behavior is affected.

The Liver is the the main organ responsible for cleaning up the mess.

It converts the alcohol into less harmful substances.

But it can only break down about 15 millilitres of alcohol an hour, which is about one standard drink.

So the more a person drinks, the longer it takes the liver to clean up and for the person to finaly feel normal.

Okay so the effects of alcohol eventually wear off and the person seems normal again but what about the long term effects?

Alcohol can cause liver damage, heart disease and certain types of cancer.

And new studies show it can cause serious harm to teenagers' brains.

You see before the age of 21 your brain is still developing and going through significant changes and rewiring.

Drinking, what is pretty much a poison puts you at risk of damaging that process.

And experts say this can affect your ability to learn new things.

It will also make it harder to store memories and make decisions.

There's more chance a person will become a problem drinker if they start drinking when they're young.

And with growing evidence into the effects alcohol has on young brains, some say teens should wait till they're at least 21 before touching their first drop.

 

Another danger for young people is cars.  Of all the drivers on the road, it's young guys who are most likely to have an accident - and the figures are scary!

Police say a lot of the crashes are caused by speeding or racing so now there's a push for much tougher laws to help stop the problem.

Hoon Drivers

Nathan Bazley, reporter

NATHAN BAZLEY REPORTING: When you think of street racing images like this probably aren't the first ones that come to mind. You probably think of movies like "The Fast and the Furious" ... But like it or not... this is closer to the truth.

Research shows that speed is a factor in 40 percent of all road deaths.

One man who knows this all too well is Ian Van Rooyen. He was speeding and drunk when he hit a car carrying a young couple, killing one of them and badly injuring the other.

IAN VAN ROOYEN, DRIVER: It was a massive shock for me. I didn't know what had happened. And then I had a look around. And I saw the other car was up in the nature strip. I ran over to them and as I got closer, I could see that the car was actually wrapped around a pole.

Ian now talks to schools telling them about the terrible consequences of dangerous driving.

IAN VAN ROOYEN, DRIVER: What does it feel like to kill a man? Well, I can tell you, it dominates your thoughts. It can reduce a grown man to tears at any time. Regret is a terrible thing.

So it's clear that speeding is a huge problem and one area that unfortunately involves lots of young guys is illegal street racing.

People are worried about it because they say it is causing a lot of accidents. This crash in Sydney has really put the issue in the headlines.

ABC NEWS REPORT: Police allege the drivers of two commodores had been street racing when they ploughed into the couple's station wagon early Sunday evening. Both in their 70s Kudy and Alan Howe had seven children and 15 grandchildren they'd been married for fifty years.

The case has already got people arguing for tougher laws against what they call hoon driving.

In some states police are trying something new to crack down on hoons; confiscating their cars.

They can have their cars taken for excessive speeding or for doing burnouts or doughnuts.

In Victoria alone, over 2000 cars have already been impounded. They can be taken for 48 hours, three months or forever.

In Victoria the most common type of impounded car under anti-hoon laws is Holden. Nearly half of all cars seized have the lion badge.

For some people racing is a passion they can't do without. And there is a way of enjoying it without breaking the law.

Legal drag racing is a popular sport and it's done on a safe track so no one else can get hurt.

Police say they would like to see all illegal racers hit the track bore they see them here... or worse still... here...

Tech Schools

Catherine Ellis, reporter

Now to a story about schools ... they're all pretty much the same - right?  Well maybe not ... some kids would rather learn about working with their hands and building stuff. They might want to be a plumber or a chef or some other tradie.  The only problem is there's not always a lot of opportunities to learn those skills ... but Catherine's discovered some schools are changing that.

 

PATRICK KELLY, TECH COLLEGE MANAGER: They like working with their hands... they like getting dirty... the technical colleges provide the opportunity to do that.

CATHERINE ELLIS, REPORTER: Is it very similar to school?

TIM, STUDENT: Ah heck no. It's more laid back.

Welcome to one of the new technical colleges that are being set up right across Australia.

They're for kids in year 11 and 12 who want to learn a trade.

What's a trade? Well it's jobs like bricklayers, electricians, mechanics, chefs, and hairdressers, in fact there's tons to choose from.

Sixteen-year-old Anthony wants to be a tradie - he's training to become a plumber.

ANTHONY, STUDENT: I knew I wanted to get into a trade... which is plumbing and this here specialises in finding me an apprenticeship.

An apprenticeship is how you learn a trade.

You sign up to work with a tradie for a few years and he or she agrees to teach you how to do the job - you even get paid!

The new technical schools want to help kids get into apprenticeships.

Even though he's at school, Anthony is already spending time with a plumber out on the job.

The students also do a lot of practical stuff in class.

ANTHONY, STUDENT: You do a lot of fun stuff and you make a lot of practical stuff like tables... we've done our own house project... just exciting stuff like that.

They still do some of the normal school subjects, but they're specially designed to help them in their careers.

So for example in English they'll learn how to write bills and business letters.

TIM, STUDENT: At normal school you're doing stuff that you may not want to do, but here you're doing stuff that you want to do so I guess you're more into it than other things like Romeo and Juliet.

Tim is training to be a boilermaker, which means he loves working with metal.

TIM, STUDENT: When I was younger I wanted to be an architect, then a zoologist and so on and then last year I narrowed it down to a boiler maker.

CATHERINE, REPORTER: And you enjoy it?

TIM, STUDENT: Oh I love it!

At the end of school the kids have their year 12 certificate but they're also part way through an apprenticeship and they walk out the door with a job.

Of course the Tech colleges aren't just for boys.

PATRICK KELLY, TECH, COLLEGE MANAGER: We have girls enrolled in our automotive courses and a significant number in our commercial cookery classes. But we also encourage all the girls to go into all the other different trade areas.

But the idea of Technical Colleges isn't new. There used to be a lot of them but around 30 years ago there was a shift. Kids were encouraged to go to university, so a lot of the tech schools were shut down - Big Mistake!

There's now a shortage of tradies. So that's why these new technical colleges are being built.

This is one of them and the company building it is using a college kid.

Seventeen-year-old Nick is helping to lay the concrete. He and the other students have big plans for the future.

NICK, STUDENT: I want to own my own company doing concreting.

TIM, STUDENT: Go out to the mines and um obviously do boiler making out there and earn a bit of money then come back and buy a house.

COPYRIGHT CASE

Nathan Bazley, reporter

Sounds like a good plan!

Last year, a single mother in America was fined nearly a quarter of a million dollars for sharing 24 songs online. So if she was fined does that mean we could be too? I had a look at how the decisions we make about sharing music could mean we're breaking the law.

KID 1: I usually download music about twice every week depending on what songs i want.

KID 2: I usually download a few songs every month.

KID 1: It's quick and easy and it's free and it's better than going out and buying some CDs.

KID 3: Most celebrities have enough money already.

Downloading mp3s has well and truly become second nature to us.

With a few clicks, we can basically find any song we want on the net, download it and have it on our players before we'd even get on the road to the nearest record shop.

NATHAN BAZLEY, REPORTER: I think most of us know downloading mp3s in that way is illegal.

But when a mum was fined 247,000 dollars recently, that's not why she got into trouble.

She was fined, not for downloading the files, but for sharing them!

Confused? Well here's why.

If you download a music file, you break copyright law.  Simple!

But if you share your music files, so that they are available for other people to copy, you're breaking another copyright law as well!

The scary thing is you could be doing it right now without even realising it.

When you download a file-sharing program, it asks you what files or folders you want to share and anything you include in this folder can be seen by everyone else using that program.

If they want to download it, all they have to do is double click and your files are copied directly to their hard drive.

And all of a sudden you could be up for a whole lot of cash, or even jail time!

NATHAN BAZLEY, REPORTER: We asked you if you thought it was fair that sharing music is illegal.  Sixty-six percent of you said it wasn't fair.

But if it wasn't for copyright laws, artists might find it hard to make any money from their creations. And we mightn't have a lot of the music we listen to everyday, like this.

Copyright law is there to protect the things we create. That could mean a story you write, a drawing, or in this case, a song.

Everything we make is automatically protected by copyright law. As long as it's original and it's recorded somewhere.

So my future number-one dance floor anthem is safe and after selling it, I have enough money to live on while I write my next big hit!

Well, that's in theory. Since mp3s have become popular, the recording industry is worried about its future. Here is a fast fact for you -

It's estimated that over 20 billion music tracks are downloaded illegally each year.

That's 25 illegal downloads for every legal one.

Record companies say that with all this illegal downloading going on, less money is flowing back to the original artists.

Legal action against illegal down loaders hasn't reached that point here in Australia.

While some people have been threatened, experts say different laws here make it much harder to get the large payouts we saw in America.

But one thing this case does prove, is that the recording industry won't take downloading lying down.

And if you want to have your say about illegal downloads or anything else you've seen today, just go to our website, abc.net.au/btn and leave a message in our guest book.

See you next time.