Britain is suffering from a drink problem

As George Best lies in hospital cherishing his newly transplanted liver, having abused to death his last one through wild drinking, we learn that another gifted footballer, the Manchester United captain Roy Keane, has confessed that he too has had a "big problem, a major problem" of excessive boozing and bad behaviour. He has been in police cells, in terrible pub fights, even got himself a crippling injury, he says, because of overdosing on alcohol. The London mayor, Ken Livingstone, found himself embroiled in a scandal after drinking at a party and poor Gurbux Singh saw his glittering career at the Commission for Racial Equality crash last week because he had imbibed too much good wine at Lord's cricket ground, courtesy of British Airways' hospitality. It was interesting that in all the column inches we had on the incident, none sought to question the barrels of booze offered and consumed at big business, media, arts or showbiz summer and Christmas events.

As we all know, the rehab clinics are full of other famous names, people who were rich and successful, yet were nearly destroyed because they did not know when to say no to that next glass of vodka or wine or lager.

If they survive, as has the quiz-mistress Anne Robinson, they go on to write salutary books which they hope will save the souls of all those other miserable creatures who are drowning in alcohol, often taking their families down with them. It is a foolish hope. I fear such stories only serve to encourage brave drinkers by giving them the impression that you can always pull back from the brink. Nothing seems to be stopping the vast intake in alcohol consumption which is our hallmark as a nation.

In striking contrast to drugs and smoking, this problem has provoked no national conversation. Drunks like the late Alan Clarke are a laugh, and drinking is regarded as a fundamental human right. (While travelling to Cairo last month on EgyptAir, which serves no alcohol, I wanted to throttle some of my compatriots who clearly thought this ban was a gross violation of some treaty or other.) And anyone who doesn't share this passion for drink is a bore or a dangerous fundamentalist or a weakling. One of the stupidest ministerial remarks was made by Jack Straw when he was home secretary. Announcing some further liberalisation of pub hours, he said this was good news for "people who can take their drink".

Surveys reveal that Britons are now the biggest binge drinkers in the European Union. Dr Martin Plant of Bristol University and Professor Nick Heather of Newcastle say the levels of drinking among the young are rising to unprecedented levels – 26 per cent of 11-15 year olds drink. As I write, the poor residents of Malaga, Rhodes, Cyprus and elsewhere will be going through the annual torment of having pissed Brits vomiting and fornicating on their streets. Alcohol-related diseases and accidents are bringing the NHS to its knees, according to a recent report by Alcohol Concern, with costs running at nearly £3bn per year. A MORI poll reveals that a million or more 18-24 year olds regularly drink to become legless. Alcohol is a factor in 25 per cent of all acute male admissions to A&E departments. And women who believe feminism was about the right to behave as wickedly as men are quickly catching up. Cirrhosis of the liver now kills more women than cervical cancer.

I speak not as a sanctimonious teetotaller. In common with my Egyptian, Palestinian, Pakistani, Syrian and Jordanian friends, I do drink wine, maybe a couple of glasses a week. Wine appears in many old Arab medicinal books. More Muslims drink than is acknowledged in public and we too have our share of alcohol-related problems.

I had a cousin, now dead as a result, who drank a bottle of whiskey every day, then beat his wife with a coat hanger if she hadn't locked herself in the bathroom. However, alcohol is never seen as a friend but as a sly enemy; and transgressors, inside and out, are given little understanding. A Muslim e-mailed me after the Gurbux Singh scandal: "What do you expect? He's a Sikh, they drink without limits. He deserved all he got." Stereotyping comes as easily to Asians as everyone else.

Other countries too are going through similar upsurges in drinking. In the usually more temperate United States, young women, especially college students and high-flying professionals, are indulging in a new kind of binge drinking. Alcohol-related problems are rising in many former communist countries, in Africa, India and elsewhere. But we Britons have normalised drunkenness to an extent that is exceptional and frightening. I still cannot understand why we expect universities – which our taxes are paying for – to be places where young people must be sloshed and doped. Many Asian and African students find such expectations alarming and burdensome. They are then accused of not integrating. Why should they be forced into a mindless, three-year orgy? And if this is what we expect of our best, what hope is there for the rest?

Cultural change has also become a problem since greater integration with Europe. My English husband tells me that although the pub culture was intolerably male in the past, most pubs were not violent places and there was a ritual as to how much men drank and what they taught their sons. His father went down the pub in Brighton every evening after his eight-hour-a-day job as a second-hand car salesman. He was always home for dinner exactly at the same time, never out of his head. On Sundays his mum also went for a drink. Some people always overdid it and ruined themselves, but it was not all out of control as it appears to be today. The longer opening hours and increase in "family" pubs may have taken away panic over quick drinking, but other developments have added to the amount that people now drink. We have, it seems to me, added on a layer of continental-style drinking on top of the old traditions. Wine here is the biggest culprit.

Ten years ago (almost exactly the moment when alcohol intake began to rise alarmingly) fewer Britons were wine buffs. Now, of course, if you admit you don't know about wine you sound as low-grade and ignorant as someone who claims never to have read a novel or poetry. It is an essential mark of civilisation. Knowledgeable wine connoisseurs are canonised and it is assumed that you cannot have too much of a good vintage and that wine simply leads to bonhomie whereas beer and lager makes for large smelly louts. If only they knew, the wine yobs one meets these days. I have been covered in spit by a reeling, famous broadcaster, propositioned by a Tory fat cat and had my hair pulled hard by a successful actor this summer: all three were drinking fine wines at summer parties in the gardens of frightfully prestigious buildings.

Our new drink culture needs radical policies and it is good that, this July, Tony Blair ordered a national investigation into alcohol abuse. We must also ask whether the Portman Group, the drinks watchdog funded by the drinks industry, can be trusted to respond robustly enough to the crisis we face. And since we were so quick to learn how to drink more from our continental cousins, we should maybe also try to emulate Italy, which has recently managed to halve its intake of alcohol, and France, which has cut its drink consumption by a third.

y.alibhai-brown@independent.co.uk