FL,
Statistics are fine, clever debaters use them to prove and disprove many points. But believe me, there is no room for Alcohol or the after effects of Alcohol on the flight deck. You seem to be making an argument in the opposite. Small errors can start the chain that may lead to an incident, it IS a flight safety issue.
Does every citizen who commits an offence through alcohol go home and phone the Central Statistics office to make sure their statistics are correct ?
How much time have you spent working on the flight deck of Airliners ?. How many times have you been on crew overnights ?.
Has a member of your crew ever reported for duty in a state that they had to be advised to report sick.
Statistics are fine, but they dont show what happens behind closed doors, in the privacy of the Crew Room and what has not been reported to Regulatory Authorities. In most of infringements, it is the fellow Crew Member who is put on the spot to make the call.
In my years of flying, Europe, MIddle East, Asia, U.S., I have never seen any crew member, have never known any crew member (Freudian slip there I initially typed, "Brew Member") who has been stopped by authorities and checked for alcohol.
Basically, it is left to fellow Crew members to deal with the infringement, thats fine, there are a minimun of two there, but what happens when they are both on the bottle together ?
This is a safety issue, the small number of individuals that infringe cannot be allowed on the flight deck.