AT 9am today, The Olde Swanne Inne in Evesham High Street opened its doors to drinkers. This was the first visible sign of the new drinking laws, which came into effect at one minute after midnight.

But, say the critics, the true signs of the effects of the Licensing Act 2003 will come not in the form of the pre-lunch drinker but in the early hours of the morning when pubs and clubs disgorge their binge-drinking clientele into the streets.

Not so, say supporters of the greater freedom offered by the Act. Staggered closing hours will mean fewer confrontations between staggering groups of drunks.

So who is right? And does the Government's agreement to a review just three months down the line mean that it has begun to have second thoughts?

No one would dispute that binge drinking, particularly among the young, is on the increase. Another worrying aspect is the growing number of young women indulging in what had hitherto been a masculine aberration. Part of the reason for that has been the reckless proliferation of Happy Hours and the growing popularity of alcopops. Cheap and available booze has found an appreciative audience.

Is this a new phenomenon? Of course it isn't. Remember The Navigation Act of 1651? Now there was a piece of legislation which really let the booze bogeyman loose on Britain.

In an early attempt at protectionism, the Act decreed that no ship could introduce goods to Britain unless they came from the country of the ship's origin. Unfortunately for Britain's working classes, most of the ships then plying trade from Europe belonged to the Netherlands.

Rationed to exporting their own nation's products, the Dutch singled out one for special attention - gin, which had been invented just a year earlier. Within a few years, binge drinking was virtually a national pastime in England. Seven years on the English population of less than seven million was drinking 18 million gallons a year.

Then, as increasingly is the case now, women were prominent in alcohol abuse. And this was no flash in the pan. One hundred years later William Hogarth's famous etching Gin Lane was unveiled.

Britain, which had started out by brewing ale to lessen the risk of disease caught from untreated water and flirted briefly with wine after its introduction by the Romans, was now in the throes of an epidemic of drunkenness and violence.

Further legislation down the years may have removed or at least lowered the level of violence, but the drunkenness continued, right up to the days of the First World War when David Lloyd George, concerned by the levels of drunkenness among female munitions workers, called time on the hours that pubs could open.

The Labour government, so often reviled as a propagator of the nanny state, now believes we are responsible enough to decide for ourselves when and what we drink. The Opposition parties and the police disagree.

Factors which may influence behaviour are that disposable incomes, even among the young, are finite; that some health warnings do appear to be having a calming effect and that all of us will have a greater say in the future of pubs which continue to spew out violent drunks at closing time.