The story is depressingly familiar. A young man, out late, gets into a confrontation. Perhaps he is in a gang, perhaps he is just unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Knives are drawn. The victim dies on the street in a pool of blood, crying out for help. By the time an ambulance arrives it is too late. Friends lay flowers at the spot. His family calls for something to be done. And then attention moves on to the next one.

Britain’s knife culture has claimed the lives of 18 young people in London alone this year. It emerged yesterday that one victim, 16-year-old Ben Kinsella, had drafted a letter to the prime minister contrasting the epidemic of knife crime in Britain with successful initiatives by mayors and youth leaders in New York and other US cities to tackle the problem. It is not just London which suffers from knife culture. Three people were injured in knife attacks in Sunderland and Newcastle on Friday night. For staff in casualty departments up and down the country, knife victims have become as common as those caught up in fist fights.

The Metropolitan police in London is responding by setting up a dedicated antiknife taskforce of 75 officers. Other forces are increasing their efforts. Whether it is a bigger threat than terrorism, as the Met suggests, can be debated. In terms of its impact on the day-to-day lives of people, particularly young people, there is no doubt that it should be a priority.

The Policy Exchange think tank, in a report, Going Ballistic, to be published this week, looks at rising gun and knife crime. Its findings, co-authored by a former assistant chief constable, are being studied in Downing Street. The 250 or so deaths a year from knife attacks are the tip of the iceberg. There are, according to the report, more than 60,000 muggings at knifepoint annually. More than half of the young victims of knife crime do not report it to the police and 45% do not even tell their parents.

For young people, carrying a knife is either a way of demonstrating to their friends, and the world, that they can look after themselves or a means of protection. It fails on the latter count; those carrying knives are much more likely to be victims. A fifth routinely carry knives, a proportion rising to more than half for those excluded from school. Children as young as 10 or 11 carry knives. While guns have become easier to get hold of, knives are ubiquitous. In the wrong hands, the kitchen drawer is a deadly armoury.

The Policy Exchange report rightly calls for an overhaul of the laws on both knife and gun crime, which it says are a “convoluted mess”. The so-called three-inch rule, which means that only larger blades are banned from the streets, should be scrapped. Police mediation techniques, pioneered in Northern Ireland, have been used successfully to reduce gang warfare in Birmingham.

Cherie Blair, wife of the former prime minister, says she fears for her children on the streets, 11 years after her husband was elected to be tough on crime and its causes. A Channel 4 commission on street crime which she chairs is calling for a violence reduction unit at the heart of government, bringing together experts from the Home Office, the Department for Children, Schools and Families and other parts of central and local government.

If the perpetrators were more aware of what lies ahead of them, it might help. Rod Morgan, former chairman of the Youth Justice Board, notes how swaggering knife-carrying youths become sobbing, lonely children once they are banged up for a long stretch for murder. This message should be driven home through tele-vision adverts and posters to act as a deterrent.

How, in the end, can you solve a problem that goes to the heart of our broken society? Knife culture has sprung out of the breakdown of family life and the emergence, long warned of by this newspaper, of a self-perpetuating underclass. We need to address knife crime directly. But we also need to rebuild society, providing structure and hope where none exists. Sadly, Britain is still moving in the wrong direction and the toll of knife victims will keep rising.