The point about booze that separates it from most of the other stuff that it was compared with is that it is perfectly fine until taken to excess. Defining "to excess" is a right bugger, but I reckon it's higher than those mournful government guidelines suggest. Millions of people "drink too much" but only a few thousand get cirrhosis every year. Most people who booze don't drink to excess and don't get addicted. It is not automatically harmful. As most people drink (whereas most people don't take crack, heroin, ecstasy, etc.), of course you can produce doom-laden statistics that show thousands of people being harmed by it. But thirty-odd thousand people are harmed by cars every year in the UK, and God knows how many are harmed because they choose to eat shit, and lots of it, every day. Actually, lots of those who booze too much also eat shit every day and a good number of 'em smoke fags and take no exercise. Trying to separate out one lifestyle factor to show how harmful it is is a charlatan's game. Eat(good stuff, though), drink (easy, tiger) and be merry (but stay in control). I reckon.