Blighted by our culture; Record View.

MORE evidence - as if we needed it - of Scotland's destructive relationship with booze.

And it's not just men who are drinking too much. Scots women now have an alcohol dependency rate double that of England.

In approximate terms, we have more than 200,000 alcoholics in our country, while more than 1.1million drink more than is good for their health.

And the statisticians who compiled the details fear these numbers may be an underestimate of the true situation.

The message that excess booze is harmful is not getting through either. For the figures reveal that young men are most likely to have drink dependency problems.

Girls are also getting bad boozing habits at a young age.

Only one in 12 of those who seek help are getting the aid they need to beat the bottle.

And when they do decide to sort their problems, it can take weeks to see someone because of the lack of expertise available.

The SNP response, yet again, is to cling to their discredited and irrelevant policy that minimum alcohol pricing will be the solution to the country's alcohol problems.

Education is key to the problem, which requires a fundamental change to the cultural heritage that has blighted Scotland for too long.

That will not happen in the home, where too many parents set bad examples which youngsters follow.

And until the Scottish government set in place a basic programme for change, those problems will continue.