The industry has slammed calls by scientists for a tax hike on alcohol, which would bring the cost of a pint up to £5.
The Calling Time report by the Academy of Medical Sciences has called for taxes on alcohol to be increased in an effort to encourage people to drink less.
They have decided that the reason for "runaway alcohol consumption" is that the cost of drinking has dropped, in real terms, since 1970.
The researchers are calling on the government to increase the duty on beer, wine and spirits so that they account for the same proportion of disposable income as they did 30 years. This means that the price of a pint would have to be raised to at least £5.
In 1970 an average weekly wage was around £32, compared with around £475 today.
For an industry that has been calling on the Chancellor to cut beer duty prices to safeguard the future of British beer such a move would be a blow.
The British Beer & Pub Association (BBPA) has criticised the proposal, claiming it is based on a "fundamental misreading" of alcohol consumption figures.
Consumption of pure alcohol has increased not because people drink more overall, the BBPA claims, but because of an increase in volumes of higher alcohol drinks, such as wine, at the expense of beer.
BBPA spokesman Mark Hast-ings said: "Increasing duty would not only be hugely unpopular, the experience of other countries shows it would be completely ineffective. It would simply drive drinking underground."
Rick Robinson, licensee of the Willougby Arms in Kingston, South London, said: "If prices have come down in real terms, surely that's progress? These boffins want to take us back to the middle ages, when a working family had to get by on one loaf of bread a week."
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£5-a-pint call to reduce alcohol harm (8 March 2004)