REPORTS OF a 20 per cent rise in alcohol-related deaths during the pandemic will doubtless sound alarm bells about safe consumption, even though most deaths resulted from long-term rather than pandemic-related problem drinking. Current official advice is 14 units per week for both men and women, as opposed to the previous advice that set the limit for men at 21 units. The idea of alcohol units was first introduced in the UK in 1987, one unit being, in theory, the amount of alcohol an average adult processes in one hour. But inevitably it’s an inexact system. For one thing, the processing rate varies from person to person; for another, there is still no international agreement about what constitutes a unit of alcohol: in the UK, it is 8g (or 10ml), in Italy 10g, in France 12g and in the US 14g. Again, until relatively recently, it was assumed, in the UK at least, that one glass of wine was equivalent to one unit of alcohol. But that was when the standard glass was 125ml. Glass sizes have increased exponentially and ubiquitously: in most restaurants and pubs, a “small” glass of wine is now 175ml and a “large” one 250ml, equivalent to a third of a standard bottle.