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A new study released on Thursday found more than four million Australians drink alcohol with the aim of getting drunk.
And about half of those people try to get drunk at least once a week.
The report, commissioned by the Alcohol Education and Rehabilitation Foundation, said 80 percent of Australians believe the nation has a drinking problem.
The report has also found that alcohol is seen as a more harmful drug than tobacco or illicit substances.
According to the foundation's chief executive Michael Thorn, over the past decade, Australia's problem with alcohol had got worse.
"There's been an increase in violence, an increase in hospitalizations. There's an ongoing indigenous despair and rising community costs conservatively put at 37.6 billion U.S. dollars a year," he told reporters in Canberra on Thursday.
"When seen against the increasingly aggressive marketing of alcohol by those producers and retailers, it tells a sorry tale."
Meanwhile, the report found that 82 percent of Australians believe more needs to be done to reduce the harm caused by alcohol-related illness, injury and related issues.
And more than half of the population believes that government, alcohol companies and pubs and clubs are not doing enough to address alcohol-related harm in the community.
Thorn called on the federal government to take immediate action, including to add warning labels on alcohol products.
Thorn said the current approach to addressing alcohol issues, which focuses on personal responsibility is clearly failing, adding that the government's alcohol policies must focus on the whole population, not just individuals.
XINHUA
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