While the report blaming rising cocaine consumption on longer pub opening hours is not worthy of further comment (people are taking it so they can carry on drinking longer, you see) another set-piece attack last week on 'booze Britain' is worth deeper consideration.
Soaring rates of alcoholic liver disease, especially in the North East, attracted the tag 'epidemic' and a particular concern that it's increasing among younger people.
This isn't news. It's been the trend for some time. Indeed, the number of alcohol-related deaths based largely on narrow definition dominated by liver cirrhosis dipped slightly last year, although that may not be significant.
The increase in alcohol-related liver disease among the young has also been noted before. The numbers are still very small, handreds a year rather than thousands, but it's still worth taking seriously.
It typically takes 10 years of heavy drinking to develop a life-threatening case of cirrhosis, which does suggest there are more people drinking heavily younger.
Yet the latest stats show that the decline in alcohol consumption the UK since 2004 (the year before flexible opening hours came in, note) has been driven by a decline in consumption among younger people.
What's happening here? Drill down into those figures and you find that more young people are abstaining - and there is a smaller minority drinking more heavily.
From an alcohol policy point of view it would therefore seem to make sense to identify that minority and do something before their health problems get too serious. For instance, alcohol brief interventions, in which GPs and others with medical authority have a structured chat with you and advise you to reduce or stop your drinking, have seen impressive results.
But instead of campaigning for more stuff that's been proved to work, the Newcastle doctors who highlighted the liver disease stats have used them call for an advertising ban, with one saying that the legal age to drink should go up from five to 15 – as if making it illegal is going to make a difference.
I'm really not bothered whether they ban alcohol advertising or not, but it won't address the problem. Like other population-wide policies, the attraction for medical temperance is that it's cheap - at least in terms of state spending. The alternatives - targeted interventions - are expensive. And of course those are the services that are being cut.
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