The French cabinet plans to make the incitement to binge drink illegal, with those who break the proposed laws facing sentences of up to 12 months behind bars and a fine of €15,000.

Health minister Marisol Touraine said the draft legislation would aim to tackle Internet incitement to binge drunk, a phenomenon that has become a serious problem in France.

"We have to put a stop to drunkenness that does such damage to young people," she said.

The law also covers anyone who encourages others to “drink until drunk,” making them liable for up to six months in jail and a fine of €7,500.

Ms Touraine said that “games or objects that glorify the excessive consumption of alcohol,” such as t-shirts and mobile phone covers, are also on the radar of health officials and lawmakers.

While France’s relationship with alcohol consumption has long been regarded worldwide as steadily moderate, binge drinking – where vast volumes of alcohol are consumed in a short time frame – is now commonplace among French youth culture.

Cities around the country with large student communities have introduced restrictions on the sale of alcohol after certain hours, and have outlawed drinking in public areas. One Brittany town, Vannes, had so many anti-social alcohol-related problems that it outlawed alcohol entirely in certain areas of the municipality.

Le binge drinking has also been cited as the cause of numerous deaths among young people; in 2013, the students’ union of Nanterre’s engineering Grande école, a prestigious university near Paris, was found guilty of criminal negligence after a student died when he drank 15 shots in 30 minutes at a student event.

The union had obtained a license to serve wine, beer, and cider, but not hard spirits. The president was not found personally liable, but the union was fined - and the subsequent scandal provoked serious discussion of drinking culture in France's elite universities, with newspapers criticising the "orgy of drinking" taking place.

Drunkenness is also believed to have brought about the deaths of three students who fell into a Paris canal last summer and then drowned.

This is not the first time that the French government has tackled ‘binge drinking’, though the previous attempt was purely semantic; last year, the Académie française, a French-language protectorate in the Ministry of Culture, officially coined the term beuverie-express to replace the Anglicism le binge drinking.