> If you look at other things like alcohol use, things don't look good.
What? Why is alcohol not regarded as a drug in this kind of research environment? Is the aim of this research to save teenagers from drug abuse, or is the aim to have lower numbers of illegal-drug-abuse?
Overall, this seems questionable at best. Not letting teenagers spending unsupervised time surely has ripple effects in most, if not all, areas of society, the most of which I'd consider highly undesirable (not granting autonomy leads to severe psychological issues down the line)
Given that the article talks about Icelandic kids no longer being heavy drinkers and the fact that nabla9 can read Finnish and so is probably not a naive English speaker, that sentence may just be an erroneous version of an intended "If you look at other things than alcohol use".
Both "like" and "than" express comparisons, that may cause confusion.
Tangent: this neatly illustrates that trying to express yourself in a foreign language and failing outright, such that what you said doesn't make any sense, is not actually the biggest problem you can run into. It's much worse when you try to express yourself and come out with a perfectly-formed sentence that means something quite different from what you were hoping.
It's easy for people to make adjustments allowing for your badly-formed sentences. It's much harder for people to make adjustments allowing for the possibility that even though you said something natural, you might have meant something else entirely.
The linked article stated that the impetus for the research was mainly a long-standing issue with the alcohol consumption levels of the young, so I think it's an issue they consider very important and related to drugs, but they separate it as drugs and alcohol have a different social and legal stigma and thus aren't directly comparable to each other.
What? Why is alcohol not regarded as a drug in this kind of research environment? Is the aim of this research to save teenagers from drug abuse, or is the aim to have lower numbers of illegal-drug-abuse?
Overall, this seems questionable at best. Not letting teenagers spending unsupervised time surely has ripple effects in most, if not all, areas of society, the most of which I'd consider highly undesirable (not granting autonomy leads to severe psychological issues down the line)