Ontario Premier Doug Ford pretends to drink from a beer can and Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy holds one at an announcement saying the province is speeding up the expansion of alcohol sales, in Toronto on May 24.Christopher Katsarov/The Canadian Press
Jean Blacklock and Andrew Auerbach are contributing columnists for The Globe and Mail. They are co-founders of Delisle Advisory Group, an independent wealth management firm serving high-net-worth families.
In the face of substantial government budget deficits, now is a good time to analyze the net costs of alcohol. Ontario’s recent decision to join other provinces in opening up access to alcohol sales beyond government-operated outlets makes the timing even more relevant.
A comparable substance is tobacco. The Canadian Substance Use Costs and Harms Report, 2007-2020, prepared by the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research and the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction, estimated tobacco’s net cost in 2020 at $3.7-billion ($11.2-billion in health care and lost productivity netted against tax revenue from tobacco sales of $7.5-billion).
The net cost of alcohol use is twice that of tobacco at $6.4-billion: an overall social cost of alcohol of $20-billion netted against Canada’s net income of $13.6-billion from liquor authorities and other alcohol-derived taxes and revenue.
And yet despite the higher price paid for alcohol use compared to tobacco use, Canada simply doesn’t use the same level of science-based education, restrictions on use and access, and advertising and labelling rules as we have seen with tobacco for the last 60 years.
Canadian governments cannot argue that the topic of alcohol use has not been thoroughly researched. The 2023 Final Report on Canada’s Guidance on Alcohol and Health from the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction came 12 years after the last guidelines on alcohol use, taking many by surprise.
The report slashed recommended low-risk drinking from a weekly limit of 15 standard-size drinks for men and 10 for women to no more than two drinks per week. Another recommendation was to provide consistent, easy-to-use information on alcohol containers so consumers can accurately track and monitor their alcohol use in terms of standard drinks.
Other suggestions included education tailored for specific groups, for example, Canadians aged 18 to 30 are more open to learning about the effects of alcohol use on life expectancy than simply being given guidelines, and some young men may benefit from education about risky behaviours more likely to arise when drinking to intoxication is normalized.
The decisions of some provinces to open up access to alcohol is frankly out of step, then, with the report and, in Ontario’s case, prompted a coalition of 10 health organizations including the Canadian Cancer Society to twice write the Premier’s office, first pointing out the cost of alcohol use to society, and later recommending mitigating strategies such as prohibiting alcohol sales 150 metres from schools and daycares and cross promotions of alcohol with food.
Moreover, the recent deaths of hockey player Johnny Gaudreau and his brother, Matthew, both allegedly struck down by a drunk driver, highlight that in addition to the tragic loss of life, the monetary cost of alcohol includes a category not applicable in tobacco use: the cost of first responders, emergency medical care and police and court proceedings.
We continue to see senseless alcohol-driven deaths, and the economic cost of alcohol far exceeds its economic benefit. Something is amiss; we need to take another look at how we approach alcohol use at a societal level.