The government willfully refuses to accept that the reasons for alcohol abuse may be connected with low pricing, but that is not the sole reason - so high pricing does not solve the issue.
People do not drink to excess because alcohol is cheap, alcholol is cheap because people drink to excess.
Our alcohol culture in this country is unlike almost any other country in the world.
In England, a large proportion of the population drink to be drunk. not to enjoy a drink with a meal, but to neck as much alcohol in the shortest time in order to be heading for alcohol poisoning because culturally, this behaviour has come to equite with having a good time.
Check out the language - slaughtered / trollied / hammered / blasted ..... the list goes on and on and on, because people love to talk about their degree of drunkeness because it is proportional to the level of a 'good time' they have had. Similarly, a hangover - which is just alcohol poisoning by a more polite term, is seen as a badge of honour to be bourne bravely the next day.
The government who imagine that all-day opening was going to turn us into a European style 'cafe society' is not populated by people who go out to town centres at weekends.
Until we educate our young people that being drunk is not big or clever, we will continue to have the health issues that are increasing year-on-year.
But education needs to be at nursery and primary level, and all governments only want to put money into secondary and university education, because that is where the vote-winning promises about 'parent power' and ' a right to further education' can be found.
Teach children to grow up thinking that brain damage and anti-social behaviour are not the ways of a civilised society, and we weill slowly but surely eradicate this ridiculous stain on our national character.