AT a friend’s house, one of the dinner guests was invited to try a Japanese whisky. As he took a tentative sip, our host bent towards him in gleeful anticipation, expecting him to splutter. Instead he knocked it back, although his throat was likely still on fire the next morning. Rewarded with a generous Hebridean malt, he drank with the self-righteous glow of one who has paid dearly for his pleasure.

My whisky of choice, first tasted in a bar in Leith, has so pungent a tang of bladderwrack and peat I can almost feel the weight of the creel on my back and the waves lapping at my feet as I drink. Like all great malts, it comes with a life-time’s memories, so evocative it could be this nation’s petit madeleine. At the end of a long evening, or in the depths of winter in a country pub, there is nothing better to warm you on your way to bed. I fear, though, that my whisky days might soon be over.

If the Scottish Whisky Association (SWA)continues to fight the Government’s aim of introducing minimum unit pricing, it will leave a sour taste in my mouth. It is staggering that this lucrative industry, worth an annual £3.8 billion to the UK economy, is seemingly heedless of the message its attitude sends. For four years the SWA has battled Holyrood, claiming this policy contravenes EU law on competition and free trade.

Earlier this autumn it was for a second time defeated, a judge ruling that health benefits to the nation over-rode any legal infringement. Yet, after consultation with its members, last month the SWA took its appeal to the Supreme Court. Even if this body finds against it, the introduction of a scheme widely acknowledged to reduce alcohol abuse will have been delayed until well into next year, when the court’s verdict will be made.

That might not sound far distant but, when you think, that in the hours between the writing of these words and the reading of them, 22 people in Scotland will have died as a result of alcohol abuse, it begins to look like a lifetime. Not only is this a ghastly way to die, but for most it will also be the culmination of years of physical, psychological and personal problems linked to excessive consumption. Behind each mortality lies a long and ugly trail of emotional and economic devastation. While the SWA continues to delay the opportunity to raise prices, families and health services, employers, neighbours and the courts are daily picking up the pieces of a society whose bottomless thirst is terrifying.

As figures consistently show, our grip on the bottle has become a vice, an affliction that affects all ranks and sorts. Since 1980, hospital admissions caused by alcohol have increased five-fold. Nor is it much better across the Border. Public Health England has followed Holyrood’s lead in urging minimum pricing. Setting a lower limit of 50p per unit would mean that a bottle of whisky costs no less than £14. That is considerably more expensive than some of the deals available on supermarket shelves.

Diehard drinkers will always find ways to harm themselves, regardless of income or price. There is also a somewhat artificial outcry on behalf of “moderate drinkers” who will suffer because of others. As Lord Carloway noted when making his ruling against the SWA in October, “The fact that the legislation would affect moderate drinkers in some way does not detract from the legitimacy of the aim as a measure designed for the general protection of public health and life”.

As a so-called moderate, I am happy to pay more if it will make life better for someone else. Nor is this entirely saintly or altruistic. Reducing alcohol consumption will improve life for all of us, by cutting NHS, court and council bills and reducing the crimes that afflict ordinary householders every day of the year: broken wing mirrors and slashed tyres, stolen bikes, opportunistic break-ins, late night brawling and assaults.

When everyone would benefit, why does the SWA continue to hold out, painting itself as the pantomime villain in an unfunny drama? The advantages of unfettered competition must be rich indeed to risk alienating the healthcare and political classes, let alone the rest of us. In my experience, this far from puritanical group shows no aversion to the comforts of a dram. Depending on the outcome of the Supreme Court ruling, that, however, might change.

Research at the University of Sheffield has estimated that, in its first year, paying 50p per unit in Scotland would result in 60 fewer deaths, a drop of 1,300 in hospital admissions and 3,500 fewer drink-related crimes. Such figures should knock the breath out of us. Yet the SWA ploughs onward with its desperate attempt to block the only workable option available to curb our destructive relationship with drink.

In so doing, the whisky lobby has been likened to the tobacco industry, which was notorious for ignoring the damage its products were causing and pressurising politicians to protect their interests. Unlike the tobacco trade, whisky lords fortunately do not enjoy the same degree of political leverage. It is one of the advantages of our form of democracy that parties are not heavily dependent on individual donors, without whose support their ambitions might fail.

Yet if it changed tack now, the association could still command strong public support. Whisky holds a hallowed place in our hearts, even among those who never touch it. It is a shorthand for the culinary and alcoholic delights we have to offer and a tangible link with our past.

This makes it even more inexplicable and shocking that the makers and purveyors of a drink that is as emblematic of the nation as gloomy castles, skirling pipes and golden eagles are behaving as if wilfully deaf and blind to the misery alcohol abuse is causing in their homeland.

One wonders why the SWA’s members are so averse to this scheme. Is there an echo in their stubbornness of distillers’ and smugglers’ revolt as witnessed in bygone years against government tariffs, and all attempts to regulate or restrict what they do?

Regardless of the reason, they are endangering their reputation. The romantic picture of the fireside dram does not match the organisation’s heartless, self-serving stance. It’s as if the country whose natural assets allow its members to make a living – a fortune in some cases – does not really matter. That is what I find hard to swallow.

Indeed, when you think of the terrible cost of alcohol addiction, it’s enough to make you take the pledge. As a half-way house, I am instead making an early New Year resolution to give up whisky in every form – yes, even miniatures! – unless the SWA retracts its appeal and gracefully retreats from the fray.

From the curative toddy to the Burns Night toast, I will not let a honeyed drop of the amber elixir touch my lips until minimum pricing is introduced.