Efforts by the Government and industry to tackle binge drinking are failing, according to leading doctors.

It is claimed educating the public is not proving effective, and tough measures like increasing the price of alcohol, banning alcohol advertising and reducing its availability should be considered.

The arguments of Professor Ian Gilmore, president of the Royal College of Physicians and Dr Nick Sheron, a liver specialist at Southampton University Hospital, have been published in the British Medical Journal.

They wrote that between 1991 and 2005, the number of deaths in the UK directly caused by alcohol almost doubled.

More people die from alcohol related illnesses than from breast cancer, cervical cancer and MRSA combined, and the pair have argued in favour of using proven methods to tackle drink problems.

They said the turning point in a similar debate about smoking was over the issue of harm from passive smoking, and yet they argue that damage to third parties from exposure to alcohol misuse is far greater.

"Drinking alcohol is a factor in more than half of violent crimes and a third of domestic violence.

"Between 780,000 and 1.3 million children are affected by their parents' use of alcohol - 30 to 60 per cent of child protection cases and 23 per cent of calls to the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children about child abuse or child neglect involved drunken adults."

The authors pointed to Russia, where specific measures introduced by former leader Mikhail Gorbachev led to a drop in deaths, saving 1.2 million lives.

His strategy, introduced in 1985, restricted the availability of alcohol, increased its cost and banned drinking in some buildings, including workplaces.

But David Poley, chief executive of the Portman Group, whose members produce more than 60 per cent of the alcohol sold in the UK, said: "International comparisons prove higher prices would not deter binge drinkers or people addicted to alcohol.

"As the number of adults drinking excessively continues to fall, measures to tackle misuse should focus on educating the minority who drink irresponsibly.

"The drink-drive culture was cut through hard-hitting advertising campaigns and there's no reason why the same cannot be achieved for problem drinking."

The editorial comes after a survey for the Department of Health and Home Office found that people in their 30s and 40s were worse at sticking to alcohol limits than people in their 20s.

It found that almost half (44 per cent) of 30 to 50-year-olds confessed to drinking too much, compared with 40 per cent of 18 to 29-year-olds.

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