FURTHER to the letter from Martin Worner (D&S Times, June 19), I would point out the sad fact that a large part of the country's pubs are not, in fact, "making money on helping people to get intoxicated”.

Many are barely making a living for the publican and, as the Campaign for Real Ale has been highlighting, something over 20 pubs are closing down every week. A major contribution to the plight of pubs – and as likely a contributor to the tragic event in Richmond – is the cost of drink, elevated by huge duty rates.

Pubs cannot avoid putting that on the bar price – they sell nothing else. Supermarkets, on the other hand, can – and do – choose to loss lead on drinks as a way of getting customers into their stores and the consequence has been cheap alcohol and the rise of the phenomenon of "pre-loading", where people stay at home drinking before heading out later to the night's entertainment venue. That may often involve using a pub for a rendezvous and quick drink before heading to the night club.

For some people, it is not "pre-" anything – drinking at home is the endgame. Some of this, particularly for the otherwise reasonably well off, has been to do with changing social attitudes to going to the pub, and for the less well off, a drink at home may be the only way to be able to enjoy one at all.

But when young people (in particular) are able to get cheap alcohol to pre-load (and, by the connotations attached to that term, end the night in a drunken state) or simply to get drunk at home or in the park, to blame pubs for putting intoxicated people on the streets to cause mayhem is aiming at the wrong target.

Why should not the supermarkets and other alcohol-selling shops also pay for CCTV to control the behaviour their products are unleashing? What about the parents of the (mostly young) people who cause vandalism and anti-social behaviour – should they not contribute for their failure to bring up their offspring with better standards of behaviour (ie all of us, via council tax)?

What have schools done to shape their output? What have the police done to stop under-age drinking? What about contributions from their budgets?

Until the Government finally accepts the need for a minimum price of alcohol, cheap alcohol-fueled disorder will continue. It would be wholly inequitable to expect pubs to pay for town centre CCTV.

JG Hetherington, Newsham, Yorkshire.