'The VD man's coming today!" It was an exultation that went up from the children every June in the school were I used to teach in Lancashire.

There was something called Careers and Relationships, and venereal disease went discouragingly under the "relationships" heading. The VD man - rejoicing in the name Dr Silver - came in from the health department to show my teenagers terrifying photographs of the results of VD, what then got called sexually-transmitted disease (STD) which prompted some of my unruly lot to ask: "Does that mean you can get it over the phone, Sir?"

The VD man was closely followed by the drugs man whose job it was to prevent the youngsters taking harmful substances. The drugs man had a nice opening line: "D'you want me to tell you about all drugs, or just the ones that are most dangerous?"

The chorus would go up: "Oh the ones that are most dangerous!" So he would tell them about tobacco and alcohol. They delighted to learn that a mere ten cigarettes a day could have you ending up with emphysema, give you a heart attack and cause the dreaded lung cancer.

While the perils of booze didn't stop at cirrhosis of the liver and destruction of the brain cells, and, as the drugs man declared merrily: "Drink is the single biggest cause of domestic violence and the breakdown of marriage". The kids loved it. If only I could have got them as interested in compound fractions and the novels of Charles Dickens.

I thought of the drugs man this morning when I read that the Government is to persist in its policy of increasing the availability of booze by longer opening hours, but then not allowing you to light up when you get to the pub. Is this a little inconsistent as a health programme, d'you think?

Longer drinking hours are sure to make my neighbourhood in the City of London less pleasant at night. Every weekend is a late-night bedlam of screaming and swearing - there was a murder last Saturday. And I think I will offer a new definition for the word "doorway" - "an outside urinal". I came back from a parish party one night last week and Cheapside, right by the Bank of England, was a raucous collection of drunks - most of them nice looking young women office workers - completely out of their heads, slobbering around the street barely managing to avoid the gutter.

I bet you never thought you'd read a column by Peter Mullen calling for more restrictions. But when it comes to booze and fags I think we ought to be a bit stricter with ourselves for the public good. Nothing severe. Just don't make booze even more available. Smoking in pubs is a vexed issue, because anyone who has enjoyed even a lightly misspent youth knows that a pint and a fag go so well together that they more than double the enjoyment.

I grew up in a period when everyone smoked everywhere - in the pub, the office, the pictures, upstairs on the bus. But we know better now. And it's simply not fair to risk giving pub staff chest and heart disease just because some of us like a quick cough and a drag with our pint.

* Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.