A reality manifest in reports and statistics detailing alcohol-realated emergency department presentations, physical and sexual assault figures.

A cursory glance at such reports seems to indicate up to one in seven ED presentations in the ACT may be alcohol-related.

While there were about 60 offences recorded by ACT police each week during the year to September 2016, that fell slightly (2.3 per cent), compared to the same period the previous year.

And police attended some 5413 'incidents requiring patrols involving alcohol' in the year to September 2016 - up 4.4 per cent on the previous year.

The numbers in the Justice quarterly reports fluctuate, but seem to be either broadly steady or slowly rising.

As for the health and social impacts, there seems to be a dearth of data in ACT Health's quarterly performance reports and recent data integrity issues meant no figures were provided to national reports on emergency department performance for 2015-16, either.

But doctors and nurses working in the city's two public hospitals, police working the streets early Saturday and Sunday mornings and the victims of violence perpetrated by some intoxicated individuals can attest.

These are not the crimes of the majority, indeed just 2810 offences involving alcohol in the year to September also indicates the most of the ACT's 390,000-odd residents are not offending while drunk.

With some 724 current liquor licences registered with the ACT Government - that's one for every 547 residents - there is no shortage of watering holes to visit, or licensed shops to buy alcohol from to consume elsewhere.

Moves by Calvary Hospital to record specific alcohol-related hospitalisations, along with details of the licence venues the individuals attended, will go a long way to producing data and help hold any venues possibly ignoring issues to account.

It should, if over a three-year-long research project, help to focus on the public symptoms of alcohol misuse, particularly violence affecting those younger residents out for a night on the tiles and the people who serve them.

But it will not open the front doors of homes in Canberra where some of these problems are most pronounced, even if it might point the way to the role of takeaway liquor outlets' role in domestic and family violence.

In and out of the home, a balance must be found between the liberties afforded to those who do the right thing, and those who may seek to use intoxication as an excuse for criminal behaviour.

Prohibition does not work, but there are more finely-tuned proposals that should (again) be debated.

After the timidity with which the ACT Government approached alcohol policies in the 2016 election, doctors have again called on the local politicians to seriously consider approaches that have worked in other jurisdictions.

If the AMA's ACT branch president Dr Steve Robson's recent comments are any guide, Chief Minister Andrew Barr's outright rejection of any lock-out laws should be reconsidered.

Increasing prices, limiting takeaway alcohol availability, limiting hours of supply - and those drinks which can be fast consumed in the late hours - may be potential solutions.

Those in control of the coffers must be open to considering all options.

Equivocation and feigned ignorance of the issues facing the community are no recipe for solutions.

It remains to be seen if Mr Barr will take up Prof Robson's invitation to 'spend a night' with police or at the Calvary Hospital emergency department as a reminder of the real impact of the drink on the community.