Sir Liam Donaldson has issued his final guidance on alcohol and young people.

In his forward he sets out the reason alcohol use by young people is of concern to policy makers:

• 20 million units of alcohol are consumed in a week by 11 to 17 year olds.
• By 15 years, most children have drunk alcohol.
• Children in England are more likely to drink alcohol than children in many other countries.
• 500,000 young people aged 11 to 15 years were drunk in the previous four weeks.
• The majority of 15 and 16 year olds (71%) associate alcohol consumption with positive consequences and having fun.
• Early age of starting drinking is associated with higher trends of alcohol dependence in adulthood and a wider range of other adverse consequences.

The advice that he offers hasn't changed since it was issued in draft at the beginning of this year.

Now as then there are five statements which are then backed up by the rational and a summary of the evidence used by Sir Liam in coming to his conclusions.

I've created a short presentation which I hope covers the statements and the reasons why Sir Liam tells us he has made them.

The guidance has tempted the Guardian to make put up some figures about young people's substance misuse on their data blog which I've turned into the following map, which shows the % of young people (11 - 15) who have been drunk at least twice.  As you can see it makes Sir Liam's point about children's propensity to drink in comparison with other European countries.