Alcohol is the most commonly used psychoactive substance in the country, according to a government of Canada webpage.
As a regulated substance, there’s a comprehensive system of rules dictating things like where and when alcohol can be sold, how much it needs to cost, how it’s allowed to be advertised, and what kind of warnings need to accompany it.
The Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at the University of Victoria has been evaluating how that system of rules works from a health perspective.
“Our study that looked at the federal level of government found that overall alcohol policies are quite poor and they’re not really in alignment with public health best practices,” said Elizabeth Farkouh, lead author of a paper evaluating federal alcohol policies.
Farkouh said that things like pricing and taxation of alcoholic beverages, marketing restrictions of alcohol, and measures to counter impaired driving all received very low scores in her group’s analysis.
“There’s a lot of health harms from alcohol and there are a lot of costs from alcohol in Canada,” she said. “This is a really important issue. And we know that alcohol policies are the primary preventable strategy to prevent alcohol related harms and costs in Canada.”
Farkouh said the policy recommendations aren’t about preventing people from being able to access alcohol.
“The goal is to really protect public health, not to limit individual freedoms, and really at the end of the day, even if all our policy recommendations were implemented, people can still consume as much alcohol as they want to.”
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