Whatbolt, wherever did you get this 'factlet'?
<<Fact is there are just as many pilots per capita who smoke funny stuff at weekends/push the drink limits/beat their partners or flout the law as any other group. Its human nature, and yes pilots are human or so I'm told.>>
My opinion is pilots are far less liable to alcoholic addiction/substance abuse than the general population as we are all aware how critical our performance can be sometimes. That so few cases of abuse by pilots have come to light shows that the message is well known. It's just the publicity of individual cases is deafening!
There are far more important areas of safety to be looked at than this area where I cannot recall professional pilots in the UK causing an accident due to substance abuse or inebriation.
It is not irrelevant that a shorthaul pilot flying European rosters on a 6 day block can effectively end up being denied any relaxing drink for almost a week. Rather unfair when almost anybody else can have a relaxing drink after work and still go in the next day. 'So what, he's paid for it!'- not really- does his extra pay cover working all holidays including Christmas, unsocial hours, leave when availbale, not usually in holiday periods. To be denied the relaxation of a drink after work as well as doing 6 day weeks shows how hard the job has become. So it's easy for you 'experts' to preach with a wagging finger how you feel aircrew should behave, but you don't have to live under the stringent requirements there are now.