How many more booze-addled South Tyneside children have to be wheeled into hospital before the Government acts on cheap drinks?

South Tyneside has the highest rate of hospital admissions for underage drinkers with serious conditions caused by alcohol abuse.

Children making themselves seriously ill from booze abuse is now a critical concern for our community. How we tackle this problem should be just as great a concern.

While there is much opposition to the so-called ‘nanny state’ intervening, there’s a growing feeling that solving this issue at a local level not effective enough. The dangers of binge-drinking have been widely known, yet individuals are ignoring the warnings.

Education is vital, but alone it may not be enough. It’s why campaigners are once-again pushing the government to introduce minimum unit pricing on alcohol.

Forget bleatings about a nanny state dictating our choices and look at the evidence. The BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal) has no doubt about the effectiveness of a minimum unit pricing (MUP) policy on booze.

A study concluded that "price-based alcohol policy interventions such as MUP are likely to reduce alcohol consumption, alcohol-related morbidity and mortality." What do we have to lose?

When bottled water can be cheaper than booze in our supermarkets, the time is right to price people out for the sake of their health.

It’s not an ideal situation, but whatever is being done now to help protect children from the health dangers of alcohol clearly isn’t working.