GROG bans on Cape York have cut violence-related serious injuries by more than half, a two-year study has found.
"We went from more than two injury retrievals per week to one a week (in the four communities surveyed)," Royal Flying Doctor Service researcher Associate Prof Stephen Margolis said.
"That's damn huge when you're only talking about a population of about 3000 people.
"These are for injuries serious enough to send an RFDS plane; things like broken limbs, stabbings, head injuries.’’
Prof Margolis and fellow researchers at JCU's School of Medicine conducted the most conclusive study yet into the impact of alcohol restrictions in indigenous communities in the two years after the limits took effect.
In the four Cape communities studied, the number of injured people picked up by the RFDS dropped from an average of 117 per year before the Alcohol Management Plans took effect in 2003, to 56 per year two years later.
Presenting the findings at an indigenous mental health conference in Cairns yesterday, Prof Margolis said the figures proved the communities had become safer places.
"To be able to reduce those (injuries) will make a dramatic difference to the quality of life of everyone, including the women and children," he said.
Although the study looked only at Flying Doctor retrievals for serious injury up to 2005, he said it appeared the rates had continued to drop in the years since.
"What's happened in the last year or so is the State Government has tightened the alcohol restrictions even further so we're closely monitoring that," Prof Margolis said.
He noted that when one of the communities closed its canteen because of liquor licensing breaches earlier this year, no residents suffered symptoms of alcohol withdrawal.
"It would suggest the people who live there have a feast or famine approach to alcohol and are not addicted to it in the traditional sense," he said.
Prof Margolis said programs should focus on why people were bingeing on alcohol.
