I’m sure that, like me, you read about there being more old people, hopeless drunks, and low IQ underclass kids than ever before, and wonder “What are we going to do with them all?” I think this sort of thing all the time, and it offends my formerly card-carrying liberal nature to do so – if only because just writing about it is enough to make readers think one must be some kind of obligatory euthanasia nutter.

The rapidly increasing longevity of the British is something a few old luvvies like Joan Bakewell witter on about in left-wing newspapers, but the near certainty of disaster (when the trend collides with governmental bankruptcy) has passed most people by. Another is the building volcano about to erupt as a result of half the population being pissed much of the time.

I don’t doubt that today’s newly released ONS statistics will be a signal for rejoicing among the Fluffies, but for those of sound mind they spell very serious trouble indeed. I posted recently about the human being’s inability to think logarithmically, and booze data require just such an ability.

That is to say, there are good signs in that among our youth, attitudes to alcohol abuse are becoming more negative: but to take too much comfort from that is to forget that a generation and a half of Brits have already been knocking the stuff back as if each day might be their last.

In fact, several aspects of alcohol abuse monitoring lend themselves to false optimism. First among these is that people understate their real consumption, so that any ‘self-assigned’ estimate is almost useless. Second, questions like ‘more than 24 units per week’ can mean 24.1 or 124.1. Third, measures of ‘average’ consumption will mask every variation from teetotalism to chronic alcoholism. But most important of all is that the data are rarely used to project the logarithmic effect on health services, families, social violence and a host of other considerations.

The new data released today, for instance, suggest that two men in five and three women in ten exceed the Government recommended daily unit allowance. However, the allowance itself was plucked out of the air (I’m serious) some years ago. I have medical friends who will tell you 35 units a week with two days of abstention is safe for most people, male or female. But if you add understatement and the open-ended consumption enigma to this, the figures for abuse are probably far higher.

What you can say for certain – because this is an observed event – is that deaths from alcohol-related illness (mainly liver failure) have risen 25% in seven years.

The beneficial effects of educating our young won’t be seen in any form for another 30-50 years, depending on each individual’s real behaviour. But extrapolate the increase from past behaviour (required to deliver a 25% rise in seven years), then add the ‘binge years’ of late – and it is a near mathematical certainty that the rise will double in the next five years. Finally, add on the heavy drinking of over 55s (largely ignored by the media, but far more deadly than anything the young get up to), and you are looking at an aged-care health crisis of horrific proportions.

Importantly, there are also clues in the figures which suggest that both education and consumer understanding are inadequate. Apparently, 90% of adults know what a unit of alcohol is, and a superficially encouraging 75% know what the weekly limits are. The problem is that at 35% of those people still exceed the recommended maximum amounts. The obvious conclusion from this is that awareness alone isn’t cutting it.

Another huge misunderstanding is the definition of ‘alcoholic’. The term is near-meaningless anyway, but for most people it still means shaking hands at 9 am, and needing a couple of stiffeners before lunch. Unfortunately, the terrible truth is that 78% of people who die from liver failure are not alcohol dependent at all: they’ve just bashed an important organ to death slowly for anything from thirty to fifty years.

All these facts and more will be put on the back burner, but they shouldn’t be. I loathe everything about the Nanny State, but most of the drop in cigarette smoking (before the anti-libertarian nutters got going after 1997) resulted from subtle advertising and PR which rendered the act itself first unfashionable, and then positively naff.

If adults want to drink themselves slowly to death (and I count myself among their number) that’s their concern; but it will become a massive new call upon limited health and care funds. The least we can do as a culture is make heavy boozing in the future as downmarket in its imagery as cigarette smoking is now.