Youth 'too stoned and fat' for the ADF

Found this wonderful article on the Australian website - it seemed so Aussie that I just had to post it. See the wonderful thing about being here in Vancouver is the manifest confidence the local culture inspires in one. Canadians are such PC peace loving, consensus building, dialogue encouraging folks that it really doesn't matter if all fit young Canadians are like we Aussies too stoned and fat to fight a decent war anyway. Leave it to the diplomatic among local Canadians to get us out of these scrapes. Hell maybe all those stoners around here are right - twist one up, sit back and just 'increase the peace'! As they say around here, right on!

Youth 'too stoned, fat' for ADF

December 12, 2005

YOUNG Australians are becoming too drugged and too fat to join the military.
Overuse of recreational drugs - particularly marijuana - among 15-year-olds and junk food-related obesity are expected to worsen over the next decade, according to an Australian Defence Force (ADF) internal recruiting plan for the next five years, obtained by The Australian.

"The high incidence of non-medical drug use among young people (recent studies suggesting up to 50 per cent of 15-year-olds smoke marijuana at least once a month) severely limits the pool of recruitable candidates," the recruiting report said.

The childhood obesity problem is "expected to worsen over time as Australian society reflects the phenomenon found in developed nations". The rate is "one of the highest among developed nations", with 25 per cent of children assessed as overweight or obese, up from five per cent in 1965.

Increasingly unhealthy lifestyles - coupled with the ageing population and private sector competition - is making it hard for the ADF to attract enough physically and mentally fit recruits to defend the nation, the newspaper says.