I AGREE with your leader column on licensing reform ('Coping with late drinking, January 14), and specifically that the present system isn't succeeding in bringing "yob culture" under control.

Five years ago when I first moved to York, my friends and I thought nothing of walking home from the city centre late at night.

For the last few months I've been reluctant to do so alone and, after the attack on Stephen Higson less than 300 yards from my front door, I am reluctant to do so at all.

But this change has happened under the present system, which suggests it no longer works.

As well as licensing pubs and bars, license drinkers too.

Drinking licenses would be available to anyone after their 18th birthday.

A licenceholder would have to show it to enter any licensed premises, to buy alcohol from an off-licence, or import any on a ferry or through the Channel Tunnel.

An individual's licence could be temporarily or permanently revoked as part of the sentence for a range of offences, or by a doctor on medical grounds (if someone is diagnosed with liver disease, for example).

Such a scheme should be self-financing as its costs would be recovered through the price of licences.

The only alternative to such a scheme is a big increase in the real cost of alcoholic drinks through taxation, so these yobs simply couldn't afford to get drunk as often or in such numbers as now.

As someone who enjoys a drink but does not feel the need to behave anti-socially after drinking it, I don't see why I should be punished for the actions of other people in this way.

Leo Enticknap,

Ingram House,

Bootham,

York.

Updated: 10:47 Wednesday, January 19, 2005