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Substance Abuse Significantly Higher Among New Zealand Homosexuals

By Hilary White

AUKLAND, July 4, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Researchers at Massey University in New Zealand have joined their work to numerous other studies showing the rate of substance abuse is markedly higher in the gay community.

Lead researcher Frank Pega said that the government needs to pay special attention to homosexuals in dealing with substance abuse issues. The findings will be presented at the Public Health Association conference in Auckland this week.

Analysing data taken by the Ministry of Health of 15,000 New Zealanders between 2003 and 2004, the researchers found that 42.7 per cent of those in the homosexual lifestyle regularly smoke cigarettes in the last year compared to 27.7 per cent of heterosexuals. Homosexuals of both sexes are also twice as likely to have used marijuana; nearly four times as likely to have used amphetamines; more than four times as likely to have used LSD and more than three times as likely to have regularly used Ecstasy.

Writing for UK-based Gay.com, the pseudonymous columnist, Stuart Who? commented on the New Zealand findings saying they should not surprise onlookers in Britain. "It's not like us British gays can look at our NZ brothers and sisters with anything but empathy. The UK regularly tops the European charts for having the biggest coke-heads, binge drinkers and pill-poppers," he wrote.

He writes, "Last weekend at Pride a friend recalled how he became ill at a certain Vauxhall club due to an OD of [the drug] GHB [Gamma hydroxy butyrate]. When he got to the 'shaker room' where the medics reside he had to sit in a chair as all four beds were taken. He looked around at the convulsing, spasmodic freaks and couldn't help but wonder if this vision of drug-induced hell would be the last thing he saw before dying. Gay pride, indeed."

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