This brings into sharp focus some age-old questions about the balance of individual rights and responsibilities.

AAW is an initiative developed under the Scottish government’s Alcohol Industry Partnership, which brings together the government and the drinks business, including producers and retailers, along with health bodies and voluntary organisations. We are promoting a common message on responsible drinking. The Scottish Beer and Pub Association and Scotland’s wider alcohol industry wholeheartedly supports AAW. The aim is to make it hard to miss the campaign’s overall central message, to “get more out of your week” by

drinking responsibly.

Across Scotland, thousands of Scottish pubs, supermarkets and other retailers will help to make Scots stop and think about their own drinking behaviour, to exercise personal responsibility and to stop and consider how much they consume. But is that central message of personal responsibility coming across?

Of course the alcohol industry shares the government’s concern over the misuse and abuse of our product. We are committed to working in partnership with government to improve our drinking culture. But just as industry sees itself as having that responsibility and obligation, we also believe that government itself has a duty to educate and communicate to its citizens their own responsibilities in relation to the responsible use of alcohol.

The industry in Scotland has too often been the target of increasing regulation around the sale of alcohol, with too little comment being made on the behaviour of those indulging in alcohol-related anti-social behaviour or those too drunk to be accountable for their actions. At the beginning of last month the new Licensing (Scotland) Act 2005 came into effect, representing the biggest single change in Scotland’s licensing laws in 30 years.

My association supported the new act and our members have spent millions of pounds in complying with its requirements, amongst other things by training all of their staff in the new legislation. At an estimated cost of £60 million, the industry is doing its bit to drive up standards in the industry.

But that commitment does not seem to have been matched by political action to challenge the behaviour of those whose alcohol abuse causes the problems. Instead, government seems content to fire off attacks on “rogue retailers” and to indulge in a line of commentary that at times seems little better than industry-bashing.

Legislators should recognise that just as the majority of Scots drink alcohol responsibly, the vast majority of pubs and retailers obey the law and sell

alcohol responsibly. Government should not associate all of Scotland’s 20,000 licensed premises, ranging from village pubs to restaurants to social clubs to supermarkets, with the sins of a small handful of bad operators who knowingly break the law.

Responsible retailers have nothing to fear from Scotland’s new drinks laws. But isn’t it time that we balanced their enforcement against retailers with more of a challenge to alcohol abusers?

Last week the Scottish government published the results of its latest Scottish Health Survey. The report concluded that the number of men and women in Scotland exceeding recommended alcohol drinking limits had actually fallen. That reduction is a positive step, though there is more to be done. But should our politicians penalise the whole population through restrictions on promotions and minimum pricing, which will penalise the responsible majority?

On the same day the survey was published, the Scottish government also published its latest crime figures. The statistics showed that in the last year the number of offences of drunkenness fell by 10%, with the numbers of drink driving offences falling by 8%. Some would say that those figures would yet again be cause for commendation, but neither merited any positive words from our elected leaders.

Instead of making the licensed industry carry the can for individual actions, thus shouldering the government’s own responsibility, shouldn’t we actually be holding the individual accountable? The balance between the individual and wider society is never simple, but we in the drinks industry seem to have indemnified problem drinkers from the consequences of their own actions. That is not what society should be asking us to do.

Patrick Browne is chief executive of the Scottish Beer and Pub Association whose members represent 1500 of Scotland’s 5000 pubs, and include the major brewers and drinks companies.