Sir, – In any supermarket in France I can buy a bottle of drinkable wine for a couple of euros. I haven’t noticed hordes of French youths binge drinking and staggering around the streets. This suggests that the propensity to binge-drink is not related to price.
Prior to a recent visit to New York, a friend recommended a visit to his cousin’s pub. On arrival I found it was closed for two weeks as a sanction for serving alcohol to under-age drinkers. Perhaps the powers that be might look at this solution in relation to our off-licences, rather than punishing us poor souls who like to spend some of our ever-decreasing disposable income on the occasional tipple. – Yours, etc, STEPHEN MacDONAGH Malahide, Co Dublin.