ALEXANDRA SHULMAN'S NOTEBOOK: Prohibition of fun? It will never be a winner, ... trends now

So what should a girl do to enjoy herself nowadays? Every week a new survey points out the toll taken on our bodies by alcohol and tobacco, the terrible twins that have been my pleasurable mainstays for around 50 years.

Last week another survey revealed that not only are middle- aged women like myself world-leading when it comes to binge-drinking, but now in the UK even our children aged between ten and 13 are leading the pack on substance abuse.

Whatever way you slice the argument, there is no good news when it comes to either drink or smokes, other than the fact that they are so enjoyable. The other morning I woke, having overdone it the night before, berating myself with my usual cry of, 'Why do I do it?' But of course at the time it was fun.

The second glass of white wine slipped down a treat before dinner, as we opened a new bottle at the table and kept topping up our glasses. Later that evening I treated myself to the pre-bedtime cigarette I find hard to give up, even though I can quite easily get through the whole of the rest of the day without them. It was all a pleasant buzzy blur – lots of laughs and all that.

At no point did I think about how I might feel the next day. At no point did I conjure up that horrible nauseous feeling that comes with the first cup of strong coffee and which, as you get older, magnifies as the hours pass. I didn't, not for a moment, consider the likely sorry leaden state of my brain when I woke.

So no wonder that our children are tempted by these drugs and why outlawing, as Rishi Sunak wants to do with teenagers and tobacco, will never work.

If a grown woman like me makes the stupid choice of overindulging while being well aware of the consequences, it's not difficult to see why teenagers binge on bottles of cheap vodka and six-packs, and sucking on vapes if they can't buy cigarettes. It's because it seems like great fun to them – and a prohibition of fun is never going to be an easy one to pull off.

There I was the other day in John Lewis, buying saucepans, as you do. At the next till was a customer who had lost her John Lewis card and wanted to know how to get a replacement. 

There are no longer cards, she was told – you need to get to your account by downloading the app. Is there no one I can call, she persisted? No, replied an implacably unhelpful jobsworth. They'll just tell you to download the app.