Health What’s to be done? According to CCSA, changing Canadians’ attitudes and drinking preferences will require a cultural shift that can only be orchestrated by governments (provincial or federal) working in collaboration with employers, health-care providers and community stakeholders to: ▶ Strengthen regulations for alcohol advertising and marketing; ▶ Increase restrictions on the physical availability of alcohol; and ▶ Adopt minimum prices for alcohol. As a first step, the report recommends replacing the current alcohol-by-volume warning label with a designation listing the number of drinks in each container, so as to give drinkers a clearer picture of how much they’re consuming on any given occasion. (This labelling has already been implemented widely.) The report doesn’t dig deeply into specific advertising and marketing realignments, nor about recent easements on availability of alcohol (beer in parks, open-air festivals, Oktoberfests, sports arenas, etc.). But the initiative to test-run drinking in selected public parks in Toronto this summer suggests that there will be some give and take in implementing the CCSA recommendations. And the federal government’s cap of two per cent on what was planned to be a 6.3 per cent increase in excise duties on alcoholic beverages soothed some of the anxieties of the beer, wine and spirits industry. But longer-term adoption of minimum pricing methods as “beneficial to public health” clearly remains on the table. The CCSA had previously staked out a position favouring Social Reference Pricing (SRP), i.e., establishing minimum prices indexed to alcohol volume per drink: a 14% alcohol red wine should be priced higher than an 11% white. It’s a strategy gaining ground internationally and is heavily promoted by groups such as the World Health Organization, a staunch promoter of higher alcohol prices worldwide. You will be hearing more about SRP before long. Moderation by choice? The paradox in this debate is that Canadians generally are not drinking as much as they did in the 1960s and, since 1980, the trend line is perceptibly lowering, coinciding perhaps with the “fitness” ethos: jogging, running, cycling, gym memberships, weight reduction and healthier living. According to the World Population Review, in 2019, Canadians older than 15 drank 8.81 litres of absolute alcohol per capita and Americans 9.97; relatively modest, compared to residents of the U.K. (11.45 litres), Spain (12.67), Germany (12.75), France (12.23) and Lithuania (13.22 litres). Data from Statista also show that between 2010 and 2017, Canadians had reduced their consumption by 10.4 per cent, Australia 14.4 per cent, and the U.K. 7.3 per cent. To date, not all of the provincial or federal governments have rushed to implement additional restrictions on alcohol availability. A spokesperson for Quebec’s finance minister assures media that the province isn’t considering any changes to the provincial liquor corporation’s current practices. “We trust citizens to make the best decisions for their health, in light of the latest knowledge on the subject.” And there’s the point. Throughout its report, CCSA has reiterated that the guidance presented is based on the principle that people living in Canada have a right to know that all alcohol use comes with risk but that, ultimately, it’s up to them to decide how much risk they’re prepared to take. CSANews | FALL 2023 | 35
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