The row over a range of cut-price drinks on offer at three JD Wetherspoon pubs in the district highlights a dilemma for the licensed trade. Just how commercially competitive can they be without laying themselves open to accusations of social irresponsibility?

Alcohol-concern campaigners believe the price-cutting move could be seen as a challenge to some people to drink excessively and might lead to binge drinking on Friday and Saturday nights. And the police are worried that it will make their job of maintaining law and order in the streets more difficult.

As they rightly point out, although the management of pubs and bars might insist on reasonable standards of behaviour on their own premises, once the drinkers have left it is up to the police to sort out any subsequent unruly behaviour.

It could be argued that individuals should be responsible for their own alcohol consumption and should stop before they have had too much, however cheap the price. Therefore any price cutting could be regarded as simply fair competition. Unfortunately, though, too many people lack that sense of personal responsibility.

There would rightly be an uproar if the makers of a particular brand of cigarettes slashed their prices to encourage more custom. Alcohol has different effects but can still be very damaging.

Perhaps a compromised version of market forces is the solution, with those establishments which want to undercut the average price for drinks doing so by a matter of only a few pence, leaving drinkers in pocket but not sufficiently so that they are tempted to spend it on one too many.