While health campaigners are likely to raise a toast to plans for separate checkout counters for alcohol, shoppers in Glasgow found the plans more difficult to swallow.

Tony Owen, 58, from Strathbungo in the south of the city, who had popped out to his local supermarket yesterday to buy a bottle of wine for him and his partner to enjoy with their evening meal, said the measure would punish responsible drinkers.

“The queues are long enough as it is,” he said. “We have just bought a bottle of wine, but we also needed some other items - and I don't see why we should be made to wait twice.”

William Callachan, 35, from Shawlands, praised the SNP for attempting to tackle the country's drink problem, but said that people could experience a sense of stigma if they were forced to wait in a different queue. “It could make people feel that they are being tarred with the same brush,” he said. “Others could look down on them.”

Ministers hope that the move will make consumers think twice before throwing drink into their shopping baskets and emphasise that alcohol is not an ordinary product. Some shoppers suggested that the move could also help to deter the under-aged from attempting to buy alcohol.

Margaret King, 50, a mother of three, from the Clarkston in East Renfrewshire, said: “I do think we need to do more to tackle under-age [drinkers]. Having separate checkouts would be a good idea because it would be easier to check their ID.”

Yafit Sombol, 29, from Battlefield in Glasgow, also said it would make the purchase of alcohol easier to monitor. “We don't drink too much - just wines and beer - but my husband probably wouldn't mind going off to wait in a separate queue,” she said.

Despite the general feeling that more must be done to curb Scotland's binge-drinking culture, especially among youngsters, some felt that better enforcement of current legislation would be more effective.

“Shopkeepers and licensed grocers are happy to sell it to anybody, so long as nobody is watching. Why are they not being targeted?” Allan Munro, a father of two from the Kingspark area of the city, said. “They have to try something to stop young people drinking, but I don't see how raising the age for off-sales to 21 or having separate aisles will achieve that outcome.”

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