A healthy adult who drinks four standard drinks at a Christmas party would need to limit their drinking for the rest of the week to six or fewer drinks to stay within the more rigid recommendations. Loading A standard drink may be much smaller than many Australians realise. Half a bottle of wine would be enough to hit the daily limit for one person. A standard drink of full-strength beer is 285ml and a standard drink of spirits 30ml. NHMRC chief executive Anne Kelso said this level of drinking did not completely eliminate risks, and the less people drink, the lower their alcohol-related harm. "For some people not drinking at all is the safest option," Professor Kelso said.

The draft guidelines tighten recommendation for under-18s, advising that children and teenagers should not drink alcohol to reduce their risk of injury or other health-related harms. The 2009 guidelines had advised parents and carers to delay underage drinking for as long as possible. "There is no known 'safe' or 'no-risk' level of drinking alcohol for children and young people aged under 18 years," Professor Kelso said. Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video "Alcohol can harm the way the brain develops, increase the risk of injury and other immediate harms, and increase the risk of developing alcohol-related conditions later in life," she said. For pregnant women, the NHMRC recommends complete abstinence from alcohol to reduce the risk of harm to their unborn children, and advise breastfeeding mothers that not drinking alcohol was safest for their babies.

"We recognise that sometimes a woman might have a drink before she discovers she is pregnant. In that case stopping drinking, with med help if needed, is a good thing to do for the pregnancy," Professor Kelso said. "While the risk of harm to the fetus is likely to be slight when the mother drinks a small amount of alcohol [less than one standard drink per day] there is not enough evidence to know for sure whether the fetus will be safe from harm even at this low level," she said. Every year more than 4000 Australians die of alcohol-related conditions or injuries. Alcohol causes roughly 70,000 admissions to hospital annually and accounts for between 10 and 15 per cent of emergency department presentations, national data shows. Alcohol is linked to more than 60 medical conditions, including several cancers. "We're not telling Australians how much to drink. We're providing advice about the health risks from drinking alcohol so that we can all make informed decisions in our daily lives," Professor Kelso said.

Federal Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy said the guidelines were the result of a comprehensive and robust three-year analysis of the best available evidence. Loading "If all Australians follow these guidelines we won't stop every alcohol-related death, but we will save thousands of lives, especially younger lives," Professor Murphy said. The draft guidelines are open for public comment until February 24 next year. Andrew Wilsmore, chief executive of Alcohol Beverages Australia, said the guidelines "provide a complicated picture to understand how to manage your long-term risk".