He has put police officers on the streets during what is euphemistically known as “the night economy”; placed undercover police officers in bars and clubs to check for underage drinking; and stationed a truck with small cells — a “Mobile Custody Suite” — in the town center on Friday and Saturday nights, so that officers can book violent or incapable drunken youths quickly and then return to the street. (The cells have a small plastic chair and a trench that runs outside, for urine and vomit, which can be hosed down later.)

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But Chief Constable Lee, appalled by the public money needed to handle and treat the problem of binge drinking, is also proposing a series of measures for the national government to consider, including a privatized system of “drunk tanks” so that those who are merely plastered can be cared for, sobered up, fined and then charged for the service. It costs the public up to £400 a night to keep a drunken person in jail, he said. Because some 70 percent of alcohol here is currently sold in stores, outside licensed pubs and bars, he also supports minimum pricing for each unit of alcohol, to avoid supermarket “loss leader” sales of cheap alcohol.

For now, that idea has been rejected by the government. But officials say they plan to ban the sale of alcohol at a price lower than that of the tax due on it, promise action against “irresponsible promotions in pubs and clubs” and have increased taxes on frozen “alcopops.”

Chief Constable Lee, who represents the Association of Chief Police Officers on the issue of problem drinking, said there had been a profound social change in Britain, and that what was once seen as amusing behavior had become a serious public hazard.

“I think more people drink and set out to get drunk as a means of entertainment than was the case in the past,” he said. “That always happened, but not in the numbers and volume and the almost normalcy created around, ‘Its O.K. to go out and get so drunk you end up lying on the streets incapable of looking after yourself.’ ”

He said 50 percent of all violent crime in Britain was alcohol-related, and that alcohol was involved in 73 percent of all domestic violence and 25 percent of child abuse cases. Alcohol-related crime is estimated to cost the economy £11 billion a year, or about $18 billion, including £3.5 billion for the National Health Service.