MY friend George is a dealer. He runs an efficient business. He does not sell to kids. He employs security at the weekend when demand and tension are high. He tries in all things to keep his drug business respectable.

He is, after all, a publican and is bound by licensing laws. But he knows what he sells is a powerful, even dangerous mind-altering drug. He increasingly sees the effect of alcohol on the doorstep of his pub rather than inside it. He is, in business terms, a victim of “prinking”, the culture of people drinking in the home before going on a night out. He is convinced the drink problem in Scotland is becoming worse, certainly that binge drinking is placing lives at risk.

This is George’s patter, his story, even his personal experience. It could be dismissed as such. But it is backed by some dark statistics.

The National Records of Scotland states there were 1,152 alcohol-related deaths in 2014 (where alcohol was the underlying cause of death).

Although alcohol-related deaths have declined in recent years, rates remain higher than they were in the early 1980s. The decline could be attributed to the recession and its impact on spending power.

And what about our hospitals? There were 35,059 alcohol-related hospital stays in 2014/15, 91 per cent resulted from an emergency admission, 71 per cent of alcohol-related stays were men, rates were highest in the 55-59 age group for men and the 50-54 age group for women, rates were nearly eight times higher for people living in the most deprived areas compared with the least deprived, Sunday is the busiest day for emergency admissions (4938), Saturdays and Sundays are the busiest days for admissions of patients aged 15-19.

And what about accidents? Alcohol is associated with 33 per cent of major trauma patients and 25 per cent of all trauma patients.

And what about crime? The Scottish Crime and Justice Survey 2012/13 reveals that in six out of 10 cases (59 per cent) of violent crime, the victim said the offender was under the influence of alcohol. In the past 10 years, half of those accused of murder were under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs at the time of the murder.

The Scottish Prisoner Survey discloses that two thirds of young offenders were drunk at the time of their offence.

And what price, in base financial terms, can be put on all of this? The Societal Cost of Alcohol Misuse in Scotland for 2007 says alcohol harm costs Scotland £3.6bn a year in health, social care, crime, productive capacity and wider costs. Alcohol, it states, costs Scottish employers £308m a year, mostly in absenteeism.

This avalanche of depressing figures does not, of course, make clear the personal cost to many in our nation who suffer at first or second hand from the effects of alcohol.

So how are we dealing with a drug that makes the heroin problem seem small? How are we attempting to tackle a profound threat to our national well-being?

First, a disclosure. George is not his real name but he is a publican and I must declare an interest in that I have not drunk alcohol for more than 20 years. This was a lifestyle choice in the same way that not playing tig on the Kingston Bridge in rush hour was a lifestyle choice. It was killing me and I decided to die in my own time.

It opens one to charges of being a “killjoy” but the case for the defence stacks up when both statistics and personal experience are brought to bear. Is it right that two thirds of crimes are committed under the influence of alcohol? Is it not concerning that three Scots a day, every day, die from alcohol-related illnesses?

And what about personal experience? Can anyone wander through a major Scottish city at the weekend and not be alarmed at how a potent drug is consumed?

“Yes, I have been accused of being a killjoy too,” says Dr Peter Rice, chairman of Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems. “But I enjoy a drink myself. It brings pleasure to a lot of people. But it causes misery and harm.”

It is also the genie that is very much out of the bottle. It is more than 80 years since prohibition ended in the United States of America and no Western country has tried to repeat the “noble experiment.” It would be destined to fail on three fronts: vested interest in the sellers, unrelenting demand from the consumer, and the difficulty of law enforcement. All three of these factors apply to the heroin trade, of course, but society still imposes a faux prohibition on some drugs.

The problem for campaigners seeking to minimise the damage caused by alcohol is that the zero tolerance option is, well, not an option. Indeed, the scale of resistance to less draconian initiatives indicates that the reform of alcohol laws must be fought in a series of small battles.

One such is being waged in Scotland. It has major implications not just for this nation but for the wider world. It may be called the extended skirmish of Minimum Unit Pricing. It is back in the Court of Session. The minimum unit pricing Bill was passed unopposed in the Scottish Parliament in 2012. Trade organisations, led by the Scottish Whisky Association, have challenged this in both European and Scottish Courts. The law has not been enacted, probably because the Government fears legal action and subsequent costs if it is overturned. The battle will almost certainly run, in the manner of a Western barroom brawl spilling out on to the street, to the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.

Dr Rice, as a clinician and campaigner, is clear about the damage caused by cheap alcohol problems. It may be noteworthy that the counter-action is led by the Scottish Whisky Association when the problem has largely resided in cut-price vodka, discounted beers and cheap cider.

It seems too that my mate, George, is not to blame. Dr Rice has been heartened by the support of the licensed trade and expands on the “prinking” phenomenon. “Pubs have the worst of both worlds,” he said. “People are coming out after drinking at home, which is called prinking. Basically, people are trying to go into pubs drunk or certainly not sober. Pubs are both losing trade and being confronted with the problems of a drunkenness they did nothing to create. We are a nation largely of home drinkers and that is one of the reasons we, as campaigners, were attracted to minimum pricing. About three quarters of drinking takes place in the home.”

He pointed out that there was a co-relation with the price of alcohol and its consumption. “In the 1990s there was a rapid increase in alcohol deaths. The reason for that was that supermarkets treated alcohol the way they treated every other commodity. It could be and was heavily discounted. It was also used as a loss leader. Alcohol joining the grocery market has been harmful.”

He believes the slight fall in alcohol deaths in recent years may be attributable to the recession cutting spending power and the disappearance of the £7 bottle of vodka that is now more likely to be in excess of £10.

Dr Smith points out, too, that Scotland has a “high tolerance for alcohol harm”. This is most crudely exhibited in the acceptance of drunk behaviour or problems caused by hangovers. “Individuals, families and communities put up with a lot of hassle from alcohol that they would not from other things,” he said.

The minimum price debate has been waged fiercely with some suggesting that the market should be allowed to decide the price and the consumer able to exploit it. But, in theory, supermarkets could price spirits at a £1 a litre if they so wished. Here the theory of libertarianism meets the reality of alcohol-related death.

“It is a modest proposal in terms of the overall market,” said Dr Rice of minimum pricing. “Many parts of the alcohol industry see the need for price control. We also need to look at availability and advertising.” Campaigners are looking at the possibility of alcohol-only checkouts in supermarkets and restrictions on advertising.

“There is evidence that shows that 10 and 11-year-olds are more familiar with beer brands than they are with ice cream brands and this largely comes from sports sponsorship and that should be phased out,” he said.

He once gave a lecture on the continent that he illustrated with slides. When the audience was shown photographs of four-year-olds wearing football strips with beer logos, they first gasped and then laughed in scandalised amazement.

Dr Rice, who expects a full Court of Session hearing on minimum pricing in the summer, knows that his campaign has some distance to run but he is not downcast. “There is a good news story here in some respects,” he said. “We are tackling the problem and bodies such as the World Health Organisation are looking at how we are trying to bring the damaging trends down.”

He added: “We have to look at price, availability and advertising. The notion that we are irrevocably locked in a destructive relationship is not true.”

But it remains an embrace that is deadly to many of our citizens.