Every day the paper boy brings more

More dire warnings that binge drinking causes brain damage.

Arbias [Alcohol Related Brain Injury Australian Services] chief executive Sonia Burton, whose Australian organisation treats people with alcohol-related brain damage - said 785,000 New Zealanders were at risk because of the sheer amount of alcohol they were drinking.

"It's critical New Zealand wakes up to an issue that will become a major crisis in the next 20 years, with health services being swamped with people with alcohol-related brain damage," she said.

As usual, the announcement has brought out all the usual suspects, including the denialists and the conspiracy theorists, according to whom this news is the latest in

the relentless campaign by Nanny State and her media lickspittles to ban every enjoyable activity and make every boring one compulsory.

Which is not to say that Lindsay Perigo doesn't have a good point. He does. ARBIAS's Sonia Burton is, indeed, an alarmist and a statist who thinks that it is the government, rather than the people who are actually doing all the drinking, who should do something about the problem.

Ms Burton said the Government must urgently implement a national education campaign to warn people of alcohol-related brain damage.

Nonetheless, Ms. Burton's critics are missing the real point. The real point is that excessive or prolonged use of alcohol causes brain damage. Per capita consumption of alcohol in New Zealand has been rising steadily since 1998. We already have an estimated 80,000 binge-drinkers with undiagnosed brain damage at large in our communities, and now this number is set to rise. Alcohol is a leading cause of death, disease and disability with huge social and economic impacts.

Just say no to alcohol-related brain damage.