Yet finger-waggers march on. "Those working in the area", says National Addiction Centre director Doug Sellman, tell him they're seeing more old people who are at like - oh, I don't know - tipplers, perhaps?
I am not greatly impressed by anecdotal evidence and informal assessments, so I'm unimpressed by the news of our drunken oldies, but it's the silly season when silly things get said and reported.
When my father - by then a confirmed depressive - was suffering from terminal cancer and came to the city for treatments, the first thing on my shopping list was a bottle of scotch for him. Then I made him his favourite fish pie and he was as happy as anyone with a death sentence hanging over them could be.
It was a sad day when he couldn't even raise a wan smile at the sight of his favourite tipple. And where was the harm?
By the time you're over 65, I expect a lot of your daily chatter consists of descriptions of symptoms and commiserations about the latest bit of you to fall off.
You have only the grand finale of life to look forward to and, if you're mainly housebound or don't get on with your family, where's the harm in a few sherries?
You might fall over, I guess, but you might fall over anyway. The very last person I'd want near me at that time would be a finger-wagger lecturing me about my diet and drinking, and demanding that I do ridiculous exercises while watching the telly.
Old age must be hard enough for a great many people without pious interference.
My father was a farmer, not a good one, and probably an excessive drinker, among other human failings.
He otherwise fitted the current profile of farmers in this country, now with an average age of 58, with no younger people stepping up to take over.
One huge problem is the cost of setting up in business as a farmer. ANZ bank economists warned last November of a "lost generation" who can't produce the million-dollar deposit needed to set up a dairy farm or the $2 million required for a sheep or beef farm. This is a huge problem for us all, since farming is still the backbone of our economy, whatever we may blithely warble about the "knowledge economy". What exactly is that, by the way?
This enormous financial outlay is surely one reason why we're now waking up to foreign takeovers of our land. Only foreigners - and big corporates - can fork out that kind of money. Then they amalgamate farms and, before you know it, the countryside has ceased to be a sociable place, with barely a human being in it. What young person would be attracted to that?
I know that in my family, my father expected to inherit a farm as the only son but, when it came to the crunch, he had to share it with his sisters. Rightly or wrongly, if other farming families had the same experience, it must have meant farms were broken up or made uneconomic to run. As well, legal changes in matrimonial property have seen family farms of several generations carved up after marriage breakups, in some cases after only a few years of living together. As is so often the case, these great - even logical - ideas have led to unintended consequences.
