Unless I have been living in a parallel universe for the past few decades, there never used to be anything remotely glamorous about alcoholism. Faced with someone staggering about incoherently and slurring the same thing over and over again, most people felt repulsion or pity or both - it was a bit like being hassled by a tramp.

This is no longer the case. There are many mysteries about the binge-drinking epidemic - not least why the British are so uniquely wedded to the idea that you can’t have fun unless you’re falling over - but the one that I find the most puzzling is to do with our changing attitudes to alcohol.

We have an alco-crisis on our hands and yet we have become strangely tolerant of drunkenness. We may not relish the thought of having to walk through a huddle of drunk teenagers late at night, but we really don’t mind drunks any more - they’re only having a laugh.

Take the pop stars on parade at last week’s Brit awards: whether it was bumbling around looking glazed, or not making any sense when required to speak, or falling down outside at the after-parties, their lame, grotty idea of fun was seen as a manifestation of the joy of being young and successful.

People used to be regarded as pitiable oddities if they went out in public sloshed to the point of speechlessness - such as George Best, say, or poor old Gazza, who was sectioned last week. Saved from being utterly repulsive by the fact that they were, or had been, famous, theirs was nevertheless an unlovely trajectory and not one that anyone admired. They were like those boring, belligerent, drunken old blokes - every pub used to have one - who smelt slightly and wanted to be your friend.

Drunken women falling over were considered revolting and particularly pitiable if their drunkenness manifested itself as friskiness, which it often did, not always with happy consequences. (Date rape emerged as a problem at about the time that women started regularly drinking to the point of unconsciousness.)

But that’s all over: today we live in a culture where drunkenness is tolerated - and I don't mean one-bottle-of-wine drunkenness, but rather the “I’m going to get off my face”, sick-in-the-street, lying on the pavement, teenage-alkie blackout sort.

Middle-aged people who don’t want to seem square (bless) smile wryly at their children's hangovers. Bien pensants think that decrying binge drinking is an act of snobbery since members of the white working class, who like their alcopops, have so few pleasures left to them.

Actually, the act of snobbery lies in allowing an entire generation - one that’s already having a difficult time - to destroy itself with drink on the basis that since there’s nothing else for its members to do they might as well get pissed and assault each other.

Besides, binge drinking occurs across the board, not least with people like me, middle-aged types who often go for weeks without a drink only to fall off the wagon in spectacular, liver-busting fashion at a party or a “celebratory” dinner.

Yet it is a fact of life that on any given weekend young people drink so much that an ever-increasing number will get liver disease in their twenties or thirties, and never mind that cirrhosis used to be an old person’s ailment.

Alcohol misuse costs the National Health Service £1.7 billion a year; at peak times 70% of A&E admissions are alcohol-related; half of all violent crimes every year are linked to alcohol; the cost of crime linked to alcohol misuse is £7 billion a year.

No wonder the British Medical Association issued a call to arms last week with a report that said longer licensing hours, combined with the availability of ever-cheaper alcohol, had resulted in a full-blown epidemic.

The BMA said it was “dismayed” by the failure to link longer licensing hours with damage to public health. Its report demanded a cut in opening hours and a ban on “irresponsible” promotional activities - such as happy hours - as well as a ban on advertising to young people.

In the wake of this, Tesco rather cravenly announced that it was keen to join the fight against binge drinking, only to be accused of “staggering hypocrisy” within 24 hours when The Times showed that the store had cut an average of 10% off its prices over the past year. Last week alone it cut the price of a can of Carling lager to 54p and a 12-pack of Guinness by 30%.

Asda, which has raised its alcohol prices by 1.3% in the past year, will tomorrow announce the measures it plans to take to restrict access to alcohol. Meanwhile, the government is being urged to raise taxation on alcohol, particularly alcopops and other drinks specifically targeted at young people.

All of these measures would be more than welcome. They have become necessary and frankly should have been addressed sooner: this is not a problem that popped up out of nowhere.

It also seems odd that we are a nation of binge drinkers, not binge smokers, and yet I can’t sit and have a cigarette in a public place but am free to injure my liver anywhere I like on a daily basis (and smoking does not make people violent or lead to unconsensual sex or punch-ups and does not clog up A&E on a Friday night - although I do see that it often involves hospitalisation at a later date).

We - well, not me, obviously - become hysterical with disapproval at the sight of the merest Marlboro Light while living in a culture that no longer sees anything amiss in not quite remembering what happened last night.

There’s something not quite right somewhere, wouldn’t you say? And addressing our inexplicably tolerant attitude to excess drinking is surely as important as tax increases and concerns about health and public disorder.

Do underage drinkers not have parents and do those parents not have any responsibilities? Do adult drinkers not have employers and do those employers not weary of the £6.4 billion lost annually through lack of productivity through alcohol misuse?

Do people, especially young ones, not have a brain that can be educated about drinking, which for so many of them has become a socially acceptable form of self-harm? Apparently not. Which is why, if we want to get a grip on this giant problem, it’s time we reclaimed our disapproval.

Times Recommends

• Fragility always gets my sympathy vote
• Double it and you get the real jobless total
• Has al-Megrahi paid his council tax?