THE onslaught has been immense. The Scottish Health Secretary, Nicola Sturgeon, never misses an opportunity to berate our misbehaviour and call for a minimum price of alcohol to be introduced.

In England, the Labour Health Secretary, Andy Burnham, is on the same campaign trail, much to the irritation of Labour MSPs at Holyrood, talking of new restrictions on advertising and labelling that will be followed up with sales restrictions and minimum pricing – which, ominously, will “steadily increase”.

Westminster’s health committee has published a report backing the policy, calling for the minimum price to be set at 50p per alcoholic unit and England’s Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, has repeated the demand for the 50p rate in his annual report.

The doctors’ trade union, the BMA, and various agencies, practically all of which are taxpayer-funded, are campaigning for the cause, some advocating that the income that it could raise should be redirected to their own coffers in pursuit of public health campaigning. Many health related charities, some of whom have been shown to take funding from the Department of Health to campaign for more NHS intervention are also on the bandwagon.

Blow away the froth, however, and what is revealed is a very strong brew of exaggeration and deceit that is aimed to make our legislators too drunk to question the lack of logic that the minimum price idea contains.

Not one of the advocates of greater control and higher prices is able to explain why so many countries that have cheaper alcohol than Britain consume less and have fewer problems with drunkenness and alcohol-related health conditions - when the logic of their argument would suggest they would be dens of iniquity and submerged in a health crisis.

The reason each country is different is because of the variable climates, traditions and cultures – price has very little impact – but that doesn’t suit the social planners’ lust for more power over our lives.

Not that this will stop Nicola Sturgeon from coming out with misleading statistics such as claiming that alcohol is 70 per cent cheaper when it is not. One only has to look at the official statistics to find that the price of alcohol has increased by 20 per cent since 1980 when measured against the retail price index, making it more expensive in real and relative terms than other goods and services.

What has changed is that average earnings have practically doubled over the same 30 years so alcohol has become more affordable to the majority of people. What this tells us is that attempts to change the price will have little if any effect on consumption as earnings relative to price will continue to remain considerably higher than 30 years ago.

And yet strangely, while alcohol has become 65 per cent more affordable, its consumption in England has been falling in the last six years – not climbing as the alarmists suggest.  Again, this does not square with the high price theory.

Last week one newspaper headline told us “Scots top UK drink league as pricing row intensifies” as if to suggest that so bad is our nation’s condition that immediate intervention is justified.

Nowhere in the report did anyone ask why consumption is lower in England where the price of a pint is cheaper, or, to put it another way, why consumption of alcohol in Scotland is higher than in the rest of the UK when average prices are more expensive? Either way the result challenges Sturgeon’s policy head on.

Another challenge to the logic of Sturgeon is how, if price is the key factor, the fortified tonic wine, Buckfast, is considered to be one of the demon drinks amongst unruly adolescents - when it is already so expensive that it would not be affected by even a 60p per alcohol unit price. Police have reported 5,000 incidents they dealt with in the last year where Buckfast was identified as having been drunk and yet the alcohol pricing plan would not touch it.  Clearly price does not stop young troublemakers buying it.

While logic is not Sturgeon’s forte, she has problems with relevance and consistency too. When Russia announced recently it was raising alcohol duties to tackle alcoholism and absenteeism, she was quick to say we should learn from the Russians – as if what they do we must ape. I cannot imagine she would adopt Russian policies of nuclear power generation or nuclear defence but any straw is grasped to defend her unpopular policy cocktail.

The proposal of a 40p unit price in Scotland and 50p in England is nothing more than a ruse to have the policy accepted – but those behind it look forward to the day when the cost can be escalated to 60p a unit and more, as Andy Burnham concedes. A 40p tariff would leave most spirits untouched, making a bottle of whisky at least £10.40 while 50p would make it £14.00 and 60p would make it £16.80. Gin and Vodka would rise to similar levels.

The undeniable fact is that when prohibition has been tried it has failed – with more people breaking the law, more incidences of alcohol-related deaths or illness and greater cost to the taxpayer. Minimum price control of alcohol is nothing more than entry-level prohibition, just look at how controls on tobacco expanded and are still growing. The policy will fail and only lead to further calls for the unit price to be increased – all in our best interests of course – punishing moderate responsible drinkers and in the end making them pariahs.

The projected savings are also illusory - drinking alcohol in moderation has many benefits - not least the generally accepted reduction in heart conditions and stroke.  A study has suggested 135,000 more people would die in the USA every year from heart failure and heart attacks if alcohol consumption was significantly reduced - but no such study has been considered for Britain or Scotland.  Then there are the benefits to the reduction in stress at work and in the home that alcohol can provide, the reduction in crime that comes from a legally based product being available and affordable rather than turning to cheep and health threatening hooch made and sold illegally. Again, no estimates have been provided for this side of the equation.

If the alcohol pricing policy were to work governments could easily find there savings are cancelled out y rising costs elsewhere while tax revenues plummet as people switch to illegal booze or reduce their consumption considerably.

It is understandable that people in the health industry who see the problems that alcohol-fuelled fools cause in accident and emergency want something to be done about consumption, but relying on health statistics that are explained by an escalation, not in so called binge-drinking, but in the number of women now consuming a growing amount of booze, is to confuse the symptoms with the cause.

What is needed is policies that target help towards those most likely to need support and provide a culture that rewards greater self-discipline and restraint. This is far harder than simply passing laws that politicians can point to as they take more control of our lives.

Arguments for minimum pricing of alcohol just do not make sense to anyone but the puritans and bullies who want power over our lives and are supported by misleading statistics or plain lies.

Consider this. Over the last ten years there has been a significant increase in sexually transmitted disease (STD), thanks to the promiscuity and careless attitude of a minority. No one is proposing that the way to halt the growth of STD should be to penalise those that enjoy a regular but moderate amount of safe sex, yet when it comes to alcohol and its abuse, politicians and their fellow travellers believe in punishing the majority to get at that minority.

Come to think of it, after attacking smoking and drinking, trying to reduce the amount of sex we enjoy might just be the next item on killjoy Nicola Sturgeon’s agenda.

• Brian Monteith is policy director of ThinkScotland.org