This move was intended purely to grab headlines and make the Government look tough, but in reality it does nothing to tackle the causes of irresponsible drinking.

Alcohol misuse affects all sections and age groups in our society. This is not a problem specific to young adults, but a broader cultural issue. Criminalising 18- to 21-year-olds won't change our ingrained societal attitudes towards drinking, it won't stop binge drinking, it won't stop 'drinking to get drunk', and it certainly won't stop underage drinking.

What it will do is discriminate against the responsible majority and send out a bizarre and contradictory message: that young adults in Scotland are responsible enough to vote, get married, join the army, get a degree, have children and choose a career, but can't be trusted to buy a bottle of wine to have with their dinner at home.

Tom French, Coalition Against Raising the Drinking Age in Scotland, Edinburgh

To compare drinking alcohol responsibly in the privacy of one's own home to "watching internet porn relating to children" is ludicrous. We all know to do the latter is illegal.

The majority of Scotland's adults enjoy alcohol legally and responsibly in their own homes and in licensed premises. However, it is recognised that a small minority of the population misuse alcohol. Focusing on stricter enforcement of the existing legislation governing the sale and consumption of alcohol and extending consumer information campaigns is a more effective approach to addressing the issue of alcohol misuse.

Effective solutions do not come from introducing headline grabbing policies that penalise all adult drinkers and do not allow people to use good judgement. Ultimately the decision to drink alcohol or not and when to do so rests with the individual.

Benet Slay, managing director, Diageo Great Britain, London

Paul Spencer calls for limits on the number of liquor licences (letters, June 22), but I can never quite fathom the reasoning behind this.

I too have numerous off-licences and pubs within a few minutes of where I live. However, even if these were randomly halved in number I could still access several licensed premises within much the same distance. Thus it seems illogical to suggest that this would reduce alcohol consumption, assuming Soviet-style queuing didn't result, which could in fact be detrimental to public order.

Perhaps the greater market power afforded to the smaller number of outlets could exert some upward pressure on prices, thus reducing consumption slightly, but surely a better idea would be to raise duty on alcohol and thus benefit the public purse (along the lines of the 'polluter pays' principle) rather than line the pockets of licensees.

Of course, senior police officers often suggest limiting licence numbers because this detracts attention from policing inadequacies, politicians like it because it affords them that precious power of patronage, and publicans like the policy simply because they can profiteer from it.

Indeed, the evidence suggests that the current law regarding "over-provision" is regarded in some quarters as existing to provide licensees with a protected market rather than for the purposes of some wider social benefit.

Perhaps the real problem can be deduced by reference to my own area; despite numerous murders while I've lived here, the occasional spin about community policing and suchlike, the nightly shouting and bawling and the presence of a police station slap bang in the middle of the area, in 16 years I've never seen a policeman on routine patrol.

Stuart Winton, Dundee