THERE can be precious few industries as virtuous as the alcohol industry.

Drink by all means, the makers say, but only in sweet moderation. The adverts and the products are labelled accordingly. "Drink," enjoins the text, "responsibly."

Like the stuff itself, the advice has odd effects. Confusion, for one. First, a multi-billion-pound enterprise does its best to make an addictive intoxicant ubiquitous. Then the people involved seem to say they'd be happier if we didn't put away every last drop. This doesn't sound like the perfect business model.

There are no drunks in the adverts. No-one is obese, psychotic, obviously diabetic, spread all over the pavement, or snarling incoherently. Everyone is young, glossy, prosperous, fit and sober. Such, presumably, are the industry's ideal drinkers. They are people who don't drink much. Really?

Unlike the medical profession, the booze trade does not define its terms. Is a responsible consumer of intoxicating liquor a person who doesn't get intoxicated? A person who becomes just a little intoxicated? How much is "a little"? If they believe a word, those who toil in the vineyards and the distilleries might be in the wrong trade.

Like any industry, the alcohol business wants to shift as much product as it can manufacture. A few makers of whisky or premier cru wines aside, no-one looks for profit in exclusivity. The bosses of drinks firms don't get together periodically to decide that a billion gallons is enough to be going on with. If we're swallowing, they're selling.

Given that fact, it is hardly surprising that five European countries would object to the Scottish Government's plan for minimum pricing. Each of the five – France, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Bulgaria – produces oceans of wine and lakes of spirits. They are all for responsible drinking, but not if it affects profits, and certainly not if it is backed by the sort of legislation that could catch on.

Nevertheless, their attitude to the SNP's proposed scheme is also a little confused. They seem to say, simultaneously, that it wouldn't work and must therefore be stopped at all costs, and – as suppliers to retailers whose prices have dropped dramatically while alcohol-related hospital admissions have soared – they also want us to believe that price doesn't matter. At the bottom of it, they are more concerned with trade rules than with responsible drinking.

In one way, you can't blame them. Countries such as France and Italy have no minimum pricing for alcohol, but they have no booze epidemics either. Consumption of the country's most famous product has been falling steadily in France. The public outrages that are part of life in towns big and small in Britain have few parallels in the wine-producing countries. These Europeans might be right, then, when they claim that minimum pricing is the wrong answer to the wrong question.

From the perspective of Scotland, where 20% more alcohol is sold per adult than in over-consuming England, it doesn't feel that way. According to an analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the real off-sales price of wines and spirits fell by one-fifth between 1990 and 2008; that of beer and cider by 30%. Supermarkets, accounting for more than 75% of sales, have competed ferociously to supply cheap booze for the home. Hence the crisis.

But there lies another complication. In historic terms, the increase in alcohol abuse has been catastrophic. In recent years, in contrast, there is just the hint of a suspicion that matters might be improving. Is this because people are getting the message, or because a brutal recession has acted as the most effective price control imaginable?

For example, NHS England reported 1.22 million alcohol-related hospital admissions in 2011-12. This was equivalent to a 51% increase over nine years. Prescriptions dispensed for the treatment of alcohol dependency rose by close to 75% in the same period. In 2012 alone, 200,900 cases were admitted to English hospitals because of alcohol.

In the five years to 2011-12 in Scotland, on the other hand, "alcohol-related discharges" fell by almost 13%. The biggest fall, perhaps thanks to all those health warnings, was among the under-20s. Instead, the 50 to 54-year-old age group accounted for most cases. Such cases were seven times more common in the most deprived areas than in the least deprived.

Still, an absolute fall from 788 discharges per 100,000 of the population in 2007-08 to 689 in 2011-12 would seem to support opponents of minimum pricing. Among Scots, education must be doing the trick, you might think. But where does that leave England, where David Cameron has abandoned plans to legislate despite the protests of health professionals, and where hospital admissions have more than doubled since 2002-03?

It could be that Scotland's statistics are misleading. For example, the Glasgow Centre for Population Health believes that while overall alcohol-related death rates have fallen, fatalities among women have increased.

Minimum pricing, if it comes, might come too late in any case to rescue the Scottish pensioners who acquired their drinking habits decades ago. Last year, more than 10,000 were treated for alcohol-related problems, a 62% increase in five years.

Advocates of minimum pricing depend almost entirely on a study published in 2008 by researchers at the University of Sheffield, plus some evidence from Canada. Opponents say that in both cases the methods were flawed, the evidence dubious. The likes of the Adam Smith Institute, suddenly sceptical towards the capitalist god of price, question whether attempts to reduce average consumption would curb the habits of confirmed alcoholics. Average people are not problem people.

Meanwhile, price cuts in Scandinavia have produced disputable results: no problems in Sweden, a big increase in consumption and illnesses in Finland. This ought to be puzzling, but it probably shows only that a generation of adult Swedes have never acquired the booze habit. Their Scottish peers have never been in that position. Perhaps minimum pricing is uniquely suited to our inglorious "tradition".

Simple questions do not always provide simple answers, but sometimes they are more useful than statistics. Why does a supermarket cut the price of anything to rock bottom? It's no act of charity. Either it is offering the item as a loss leader, or it believes that economies of scale kick in when vast quantities are sold.

Why, on the other hand, should the rich be indulged with easy access to the fine wines that are their cheap booze when the poorest are penalised? No legislation is being proposed to save the prosperous malt whisky addict from himself whether he likes it or not.

But if minimum pricing is irrelevant, as opponents say, why do governments persist in pushing up the cost of cigarettes to spare addicts from their own stupidity? If proponents of legislation want to curb consumption of a dangerous drug, meanwhile, why not treat booze as we treat heroin? Alcohol causes more damage, at far greater cost, than any class A substance.

Complicated, isn't it? Almost as complicated, certainly, as trying to define moderation. Booze is a lot of fun unless or until it destroys you. Such is the true minimum price. But until they learn the hard way, people like to get drunk. That's the truth that no-one, health campaigner or drinks conglomerate, wants to address.