It may take decades for police to get on top of alcohol-fuelled violence in Melbourne, Victoria Police chief Simon Overland is expected to say in a speech on Tuesday.
Mr Overland is also expected to announce a new attack on "profit hungry businesses" in a bid to beat the booze culture, The Age newspaper reports on Tuesday.
The speech will be delivered at the annual meeting of the Turning Point alcohol and drug centre at Melbourne University, The Age said.
In it, the commissioner says no amount of police blitzes will curb alcohol-related violence, that it has been too easy to get a liquor licence, that CBD licensing hours should be restricted and that society has not dealt with the destructive aspects of binge drinking.
"Sadly, it is all too clear that in recent years we, as a society, have perhaps taken our eye off the ball," Mr Overland says in the speech.
"The drinking culture has been allowed to transform, driven onwards by profit hungry businesses keen to exploit a new and prevailing determination amongst new generations of young people to drink until excessively drunk.
A solution to booze-fuelled violence may be many years away, the commissioner says.
"The critics who demand an end tomorrow must also recognise that arriving at our desired end state could take decades," he says.
"This is a deep-rooted cultural problem that cannot be arrested, put on trial or locked away in a prison. I suppose, in that sense, police enforcement is the last line of defence when all else has failed."
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