{"id":83269,"date":"2013-09-06T13:30:34","date_gmt":"2013-09-06T17:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=83269"},"modified":"2015-12-14T11:04:34","modified_gmt":"2015-12-14T16:04:34","slug":"called-to-new-zealand-to-open-addiction-research-center","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2013\/09\/called-to-new-zealand-to-open-addiction-research-center\/","title":{"rendered":"Called to New Zealand to Open Addiction Research Center"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Thomas<\/a>
Thomas Babor is back from the University of Auckland, where he spent two weeks as a visiting professor. Babor, a special guest speaker at the official opening of the school's Centre for Addiction Research, is pictured with associate professor Janie Sheriden, the new center's director. (Photo provided by the Centre for Addiction Research, University of Auckland)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Longtime UConn Health Center addiction researcher Thomas Babor is known worldwide for his study of problems associated with alcohol and illegal drugs\u2014so much so that he was invited to New Zealand to join the country\u2019s associate minister of health for the opening of the University of Auckland\u2019s Centre for Addiction Research.<\/p>\n

The last time Babor, professor and Health Net, Inc. Endowed Chair in Community Medicine and Public Health, was in New Zealand, he was testifying before a parliamentary committee making the case for raising the drinking age from 18 to 20.<\/p>\n

That was three years ago. Last month he spent a rigorous two-week visiting fellowship<\/a> giving lectures, media interviews, presentations at hospitals, and a keynote address at the official opening of the Centre for Addiction Research Aug. 9.<\/p>\n

\u201cNew Zealand has a serious problem with the misuse of alcohol and drugs,\u201d Babor says. \u201cThe hope is to have a health system that can be more responsive to that. By establishing the Centre for Addiction Research, they\u2019re setting up a capability for doing policy-relevant research. New Zealand, like a number of other countries, is becoming much more interested in what the scientific research says about how they can deal with alcohol and drug problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

Babor says the country is heading down a path of great interest and relevance to his research, and it\u2019s something he\u2019s watching closely.<\/p>\n

\u201cI learned an awful lot from being in New Zealand and seeing what they\u2019re doing. It\u2019s perhaps the first country in the world proceeding toward legalization of certain recreational drugs for \u2018legal highs,\u2019\u201d Babor says. \u201cIf this is a way of legalizing substances people can use to get high, the profit motive enters the situation. If that happens, not only is it fulfilling a small demand that may already exist, it is also likely to create a new demand through marketing and product innovations. It\u2019s what we\u2019ve seen with alcohol and tobacco when the profit motive enters. The commercial market is not a good way to protect public health.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peter Adams, the new center\u2019s associate director, says the visiting professorship is designed to bring leading thinkers in medical and health sciences to New Zealand to share their research insights and expertise with academics, practitioners, policymakers and students.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe nominated Professor Babor for this role not only because of his international recognition as a leading researcher in the alcohol and drug field, but also because of the breadth of his contributions which spanned alcohol and drug treatment, ethical issues, primary health interventions and public policy,\u201d Adams says. \u201cWe saw him as bringing a highly valued global perspective to discussions and seminars on current issues in New Zealand, particularly given our recent alcohol policy reforms, issues with addiction treatment approaches and concerns about liquor industry influence in public health debates.\u201d<\/p>\n

Babor says the nomination was an honor.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo the extent other countries are interested in what I\u2019m doing, it\u2019s one of the best things that someone who does research can have happen,\u201d Babor says. \u201cInstead of your work collecting dust in a library, they\u2019re taking what you\u2019ve written and applying it to their situation, using science to influence health policy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Regarding the drinking age in New Zealand, it\u2019s still 18.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe came close,\u201d Babor recalls from his 2010 trip. \u201cPolitics killed it. It would have saved many lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Follow\u00a0the UConn Health Center<\/a> on\u00a0Facebook<\/a>,\u00a0Twitter<\/a> and\u00a0YouTube<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thomas Babor is back from a two-week visiting fellowship at the University of Auckland, where he shared his expertise in the study of alcohol and drug addiction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":83278,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[179,1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[57,2010],"class_list":["post-83269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uconn-health","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-09 05:35:12","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83269"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107142,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83269\/revisions\/107142"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/83278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83269"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=83269"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=83269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}