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Drink divides the nation. The laissez faire approach says that the crude and occasionally violent excesses which make our town centres an occupational hazard on weekends may be a matter for regret but they are part of who we are as a northern race, and the state has no business interfering with the individual citizen's right to make an idiot of himself. Beyond enforcing the law, and perhaps pointing out the risks of alcohol abuse, the right response for Government is to stand back and wait for us to grow out of it all.

That is to take liberal dogma to absurd lengths. There is more than a cultural phenomenon involved here. Binge drinking has been elevated to the status of national pastime, accepted, even celebrated among the young and not so young. It is driving the drinkers to an early grave, it is the root cause of most violent crime, it makes life a misery for countless families and threatens the rest of us with mayhem.

To control it we need far sterner measures than are being considered in England and Wales (though not in Scotland) today. We should not be afraid to confront the alcohol industry and the retail trade which encourages drinking amongst the young by offering them absurdly cheap and easily available alcohol, not just in pubs but in high street stores and supermarkets. All cut-price offers, Happy Hours and advertising targeted at the young should be outlawed.

The age-limit for the purchase of alcohol should be raised from the present 18 to 21 as the Scottish government is proposing. The protest that this is discriminating against reponsible students should be ignored. In those towns where pilot tests have been carried out, with retailers cooperating in barring teenagers from purchasing drink, the results have been gratifying -- an immediate drop in crime, vandalism and random violence.

At the same time I would encourage the kind of meaures with which we were once familiar, deliberately restricting the hours when alcohol can be bought, and the outlets where it is available.

Restrictive? Anti-libertarian? Regressive? Certainly. But if we are, as a nation, to grow out of this apparent obsession with alcohol and learn to drink sensibly, then we probably need to instil rather more discipline than is currently applied. And that, aided by the credit crunch, should help us remember that alcohol is a luxury not a necessity.

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Join the Debate: Read Michael Fitzpatrick on Doctors can't treat your drinking problem

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Magnus Linklater's journalistic career spans 40 years. He has written his column for The Times since 1994 and often writes about Scottish issues