Here's the real killer. About half of the domestic violence incidents in Australia are directly related to alcohol. Newly published longitudinal research from the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education reveals that children who were being harmed by the effects of alcohol in 2008 were still being harmed in 2011.

Same kids. Three years of tears and pain experienced by people who are under 18 and who can't defend themselves.

Do you think that's OK?

Anyone who tells you we don't need to regulate alcohol - or who thinks it's OK for our sportspeople to prance across fields with alcohol ads blazoned on their heaving chests - should be removed from any kind of influence on public policy right now.

We need our reliance on alcohol to stop. That includes drying out the influence of the far-too-powerful Australian Hotels Association and the Australian Liquor Stores Association (what looks like your corner bottle-o is not exempt from wielding undue pressure: 80 per cent of liquor sold is packaged liquor just like the six-pack you bought from your local. More than half of that packaged liquor is sold by Woolworths and Coles).

With one stroke of a ministerial pen, a lot could be done to save these kids - and the rest of us - from the harm alcohol does. The federal government could just decide to raise the tax on alcohol. Joe Hockey could do it tomorrow. He could do it right now.

State and territory governments could decide right now to limit opening hours of venues which sell alcohol. Too many outlets are open for too long.

Children suffer all over Australia and in all kinds. The kids get shouted at, but that's the least of their problems. They are beaten and left alone; or are compelled to watch family members doing and saying things to each other that no child should ever have to witness.

A new Australian study, conducted by FARE, shows exactly how much alcohol feeds violence in Australia - and the news is much worse than you can imagine. It's not just the continuing torture of those kids from 2008.

It's not just children in the child protection system, although there are 10,000 of those. And it's not only those children at serious physical and mental risk, although there are more than 140,000 of those children too.

It's ordinary children from ordinary homes where someone's drinking puts them or the people with whom they live at risk.

Here are some figures you can use when people tell you that we can use alcohol in moderation. Maybe we can, but our environment makes it tough to do so.

In Australia, every single day, 15 people die from the effects of alcohol.

Here are more numbers. Those 15 people who die each day? That's on top of the 18 people who end up in hospital each hour, every day. Find that number hard to deal with? Let me make it easy for you - every 3½ minutes another person has to get medical attention because of the effects of alcohol.

Alcohol hurts our health nearly as much as tobacco hurts our health; it is third, behind tobacco and then obesity in Australia.

Here is the answer: alcohol consumption is modifiable but it takes brave governments to take the alcohol lobby on. There is no point in just telling individuals that they should take responsibility for their own behaviour when they live in a country which embraces alcohol in all its forms; in all settings; at all times of day. We call that kind of an environment alcogenic. And we must work to change that at all levels, in all settings.

FARE chief executive Michael Thorn is no dewy-eyed idealist. He worked in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet for years in the grit and grind of policy, and was poached to run FARE, which was endowed after the brewers weaseled out of paying a higher level of tax when GST was introduced.

He is convinced that taxation changes would fix the problem, and he's got shelves of research to prove it works. Making alcohol more expensive has an immediate effect on the amount purchased. He also says we must rethink the way governments allow alcohol to be marketed.

And as for opening hours and availability, the remarkable turn around in Sydney's Kings Cross shows just how safe nightlife can be if you put a cap on drinking.

"We've seen a dramatic reduction in both the number and severity of admissions to hospital because of those changes," says Thorn.

"[And] we've seen the difference it makes in indigenous communities. As soon as the [alcohol] tap is turned off, the rates of abuse drop off dramatically."

Coles, Woolies and alcohol lobbyists shouldn't decide the health and safety of Australians. They don't appear to care that 15 people die every day. They don't appear to care about the injuries or the violence.

Alcohol removes inhibitions. It fosters the breakdown of civility.

And it's a drug which should be appropriately taxed and monitored. Right now, it isn't.

Twitter @jennaprice or email jenna_p@bigpond.net.au