According to the UK's medical profession, the amount one could 'safely' drink had been falling for years. In the 1960s, Britons were advised to drink no more than a bottle of wine per day. In 1979, the advice for men was to drink no more than 56 units a week (around 4 pints of beer a day). Five years later this was reduced to 36 units and by the end of the 1980s it stood at 21 units, a little over a pint of lager a day (41). In short, the amount of alcohol that could be safely enjoyed was cut by two-thirds in the space of twenty years and for women it was a third lower still (14 units).

No one was quite sure where these limits came from, including, apparently, the doctors who set them. Dr Richard Smith was a member of the committee with came up with the recommendations in 1987 and he remembers "rather vividly" how they were arrived at:

With the criteria for who qualified as a drunk set so low, it was no surprise that Britain found itself in the depths of another public health plague. The BMJ described a "worsening epidemic of public drunkenness" (42) and Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems declared that "alcohol misuse has now reached epidemic proportions."(43) What constituted this terrifying epidemic? According to the Office of National Statistics, the number of men drinking more than 4 units a day actually fell from 39% to 35% between 2004 and 2005 (44) and the number of women drinking above government guidelines barely rose - from 8% to 9% - and remained low. The seldom heard truth was that there were twelve countries in Europe alone with a higher per capita rate of alcohol consumption that Britain (b).

Of course, alcohol abuse was not just a health issue, it also had ramifications for social disorder - 'drink-fuelled mayhem' being one popular description - but violent crime peaked in 1995 and had dropped by 44% since, even after the offence had been peculiarly redefined to include 'violence not resulting in injury' (45).

Despite substantial opposition in Parliament and in the media, the Licensing Act was introduced in November 2005 and, contrary to all predictions, it conspicuously failed to bring about the end of British civilisation. Alcohol sales fell by 2% in 2005 and by 3.3% in 2006, the latter figure representing the sharpest drop for fifteen years. (49). The biggest fall in consumption was seen in pubs and clubs (48).

As for drink-fuelled mayhem, the last three months of 2005 saw violent crime fall by 21%, in contrast to a 11% rise in the same period the previous year. Disbelieving public health bodies urged the public to wait for more data. The Institute of Alcohol Studies simply refused to accept the news at all, calling the statistics "entirely bogus", and accused the government of "sleight of hand"(46) but crime figures for 2005 and 2006 showed no rise in violent crime or drunken assaults and for a while the controversy died down.

By July 2007, however, the political climate had changed. Tony Blair was gone and Gordon Brown had never shown any enthusiasm for the Licensing Act. England's smoking ban had just come into effect and the public health lobby saw alcohol as the next obvious target. New figures from the Office of National Statistics again showed no increase in overall violent crime but there was a rise between the hours of 3 am and 6 am. The numbers were small and the rise was more than compensated by a fall in violence at the old closing hours between 11 pm and 2 am but it was enough for the British press to feel validated in their earlier predictions of widespread anarchy, as was a study published in the BMA's Emergency Medical Journal which purportedly showed a trebling in the number of alcohol-related hospital admissions (50). The study had echoes of the notorious Helena passive smoking report, based as it was on data from a single hospital in a single month, but if such a rise was seen around the country it would indeed suggest a serious problem. However, no other hospitals released their own data and the very fact that the national crime statistics showed no rise in drunken violence strongly suggested that the BMA study was erroneous.

The facts notwithstanding, by 2007 there was a general consensus that the UK was in the grip of a binge-drinking epidemic. The final straw was when the Office of National Statistics announced that henceforth they would assume that all Britons were drinking stronger beverages from larger glasses. This arbitrary decision meant that everyone was now drinking 50% more alcohol than had previously been assumed and 13 million people were now classified as drinking at hazardous levels. The same number of people were smokers and the 1.7 billion pounds that the BMA claimed drinkers were costing the NHS each year was very close to the 1.5 billion pounds that smokers were said to cost the taxpayer. Clearly, therefore, something must be done.

Six weeks after the smoking ban took effect in England, Cheshire's Chief Constable called for a total ban on drinking outdoors. This was the first of a flurry of proposals put forward in the escalating war on alcohol. One effect of the ONS's decision to assume larger glasses and stronger drinks was that it meant that a woman who drank one glass of wine a night was now consuming significantly more than her weekly limit of 14 units of alcohol. As a direct response, the Department of Health leapt into action with a ten million pound advertising campaign aimed at middle-class, middle-aged wine drinkers. Meanwhile, public health minister Caroline Flint announced that warning labels would be put on all bottles of alcohol and the state-funded pressure group Alcohol Concern campaigned for parents who allowed their children to drink at home to be prosecuted. Julian Le Grand, having recently made a name for himself by calling for smoking licenses, said that shoppers were being "lured" and "seduced" into buying alcohol, called for a "dramatic rise" in the price of drink and favoured banning supermarkets from selling alcohol altogether.

The BMA served up a predictable smorgasbord of familiar policies to tackle the "epidemic of alcohol misuse" including old favourites like higher taxes plus some new suggestions such as banning happy hours, forcing landlords to stick anti-alcohol posters up in their pubs and putting health warnings on restaurant menus.

Centre stage was the president of the Royal College of Physicians, Ian Gilmore. After declaring himself "blissfully happy" on the day of the smoking ban, he called for a total ban on alcohol advertising and became chairman of the Health Alcohol Alliance. This newly formed pressure group was a conglomeration of like-minded public health bodies whose members had clearly learnt the lessons from ASH's co-ordinated public relations campaign of 2005-06 and saw that they could achieve more if they spoke with one voice (the "swarm effect"). The Health Alcohol Alliance declared that alcohol was worse than drugs and demanded a 10% tax rise on drink which, they claimed, would result in "up to" 30% fewer alcohol-related deaths (51).