I have banged on long and often on the AB about alcohol, and the reasons for our current dilema as a society.
It boils down to this - we have an alcohol-based leisure industry. That has meant that people measure their 'enjoyment' by how much alcohol they have consumed and how much alcohol poisoning they have given themselves - of course, it';s dressed up in a variety of hip phrases - trollyed, hammered, mullered, smashed, ratted, and so on ad nauseum.
This attitude is peculiar to the British Isles, which is why Euriopeans are so disgysted when we export this vile habbit via our holiday makers, and why the government's notion of 24-hour drinking leading to a 'cafe society' was such a joke which only they failed to see..
My response would be to make the sale of alcohol seriously strictly controlled, which means getting it out of supermarkets, which hias fuelled the situation over the last few years.
We have to educate children that being drunk is not big, or hip, or clever, or, God forbid, normal behaviour, and until education goes into that area of our society, we will never stop this nasty pervasive drug from infecting all our lives.
Of course, no government is ever going to be tough enough, because it is too much of a vote-looser, so they pussy-foot around doing very little - as usual.