Secondary school girls in the Caribbean are apparently using just as much alcohol as the boys, the new findings of a study have revealed.These new findings signify a complete shift since alcohol consumption has been dominated for yearsPernell Clarke of OAS/CICADby males.“In the majority of the countries, when you look at past years prevalence of alcohol use, the use by female has actually outstripped that of males,” Pernell Clarke, Coordinator of Information and Research for the Organization of American States/ Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (OAS/CICAD) said during a recent revelation of the findings.He continued, “This is something we would have been keeping an eye on for a number of years because there was a point in time when this picture would have been totally reversed. Alcohol use was a male phenomenon seven or eight years ago.”A survey taking a look into the drug use among secondary school students in the Caribbean was conducted in 2013 by OAS/CICAD. Guyana was among 13 Caribbean Countries analysed as part of the OAS student drug use project. The other countries included Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Haiti, Jamaica, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Trinidad and Tobago.According to the findings, alcohol and marijuana were the most commonly used drugs in the surveyed countries. Additionally, the findings showed that in almost all of the countries, the prevalence of alcohol use in females was higher or about the same as the prevalence in males. Guyana, Haiti and Belize were the only countries where the boys ranked higher than the girls in terms of past year prevalence for alcohol use. The disparity between the genders was greatest in Guyana and Haiti.New findings have shown that females are drinking just as much as males.Overall, male prevalence ranked at about 50 percent while female prevalence ranked at about 49 percent.“We need to pay close attention to this phenomenon and find out what is causing this, why is it developing the way it is; we see that the situation in Guyana remains the way it was before, where males are using at a higher rate than females but there’s no guarantee that this will remain the same,” Clarke noted.The age of first use of alcohol was also higher for females or on par with males in many of the countries. While Guyana, Belize, and Haiti had ranked lowest in lifetime prevalence for females, the females outstripped the males for first time use in these very countries.Throughout the Caribbean, the age of first use ranged from as low as 8.5 years – noted in males in Dominica – to about 14 years – noted in females in Haiti.The overall average among the Caribbean for first use of alcohol was about 12 years old. Further,Cheap NFL Jerseys Authentic, the average in the Caribbean for males was about 11.9 years and for females 12.5 years.Clarke emphasised that it was important to raise the age of first use of alcohol.“Research has shown that if we delay the onset of first time use, then we’ll reduce the likelihood of problematic use, dependency and addiction. Age of first use is not something to be taken lightly; it’s a very important factor and the aim of any programming we do is to try to raise that age of first use,Cheap Jerseys Free Shipping,” he stressed.Clarke indicated that comparatively, Guyana was doing better than most of the Caribbean countries in terms of drug use. In fact, Clarke said, it was found that for most of the substances Guyana is either “mid pack” in terms of use and prevalence of use, or somewhere towards the end of the spectrum.Focusing on alcohol consumption in secondary school students, Clarke indicated that Guyana had the lowest lifetime prevalence among the surveyed countries. Guyana’s lifetime prevalence was 52 percent, followed by Haiti with a lifetime prevalence of about 55 percent. The highest recorded rate was in Dominica, with 80 percent.Similarly, Guyana was the lowest in the past year use as well as the past month use.“In the grand scheme of things,cheap nfl jerseys, the situation here in Guyana is nothing to be happy about but if you look at the picture more broadly, there are several other countries that are dealing with worse issues than right here,” he said.However, while Guyana was at the end of the spectrum in terms of alcohol use in many areas,Jerseys From China, it was on top in terms of binge drinking.“We not only looked at the proportion of students that are drinking but we asked them how they were drinking. We asked them how many times they would have drunk five or more drinks in one sitting,” he explained.According to Clarke, this question focused on binge drinking, an area where Guyana outstripped all of the other countries.The data