By: C Icart, Staff Writer
Content warning: mentions of alcohol and sexual violence.
The new alcohol guidance is in, and what many Canadians were previously told was moderate drinking is now revealed to be linked to a “number of serious health risks, including cancer, heart disease, and stroke.” But telling Canadians that their consumption habits are unhealthy isn’t the solution to (apparently) excessive consumption. Instead, we need to address the underlying factors that lead citizens to increase their alcohol consumption.
The 2023 Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA) report reveals that Canadian health officials no longer consider any amount of alcohol as “safe.” Instead, the guidelines are presented as a continuum from low health risk to high risk. Low risk is up to two standard drinks per week, and high risk consists of over six standard drinks per week. According to CTV, “A standard drink is considered one of the following: 12 oz. of beer with 5% alcohol, five oz. of wine with 12% alcohol, or 1.5 oz. of hard liquor with 40% alcohol.” Any way you slice it, this is a significant reduction in what was considered safe by the 2011 CCSA guidelines, which labeled 15 standard drinks a week for men and 10 for women as low-risk.
Since its publication, the CCSA’s report has generated heated debate over whether the new guidelines were fear-mongering about the risks associated with alcohol, or whether they were sound health advice that targeted a negative behavior.
There’s truth to both points. Canada is on a spectrum of alcohol guidelines that vary wildly by country. France and Australia’s safe alcohol levels are higher than Canada’s, but also trend higher on a 2023 review of healthiest countries, complicating the assumption that lower alcohol consumption is critical to better health outcomes. On the flip side, alcohol is a Group 1 carcinogen associated with at least seven types of cancer. It is also “frequently associated with violent and aggressive behaviour, including intimate partner violence, male-to-female sexual violence, and aggression and violence between adults.”
However, both sides of the argument are missing the point. The report isn’t a policy change. Those who are up in arms about the report are looking for outrage, while those who celebrate it are too easily placated. People need access to information about substance consumption to make informed decisions — but that’s not enough. These new guidelines ignore how and why people consume substances.
For instance, according to Statistics Canada, a quarter of Canadians who consumed alcohol before the pandemic increased their consumption during the pandemic citing reasons like boredom, stress, and loneliness. Studies have also found significant links between social influences and drinking, including friends’ alcohol consumption as a common factor. It’s the last one that we need to tackle. Telling Canadians to drink less without addressing social pressures that lead to excessive consumption is not the most effective strategy.
The pandemic is not over, the cost of living is skyrocketing across the country, and climate anxiety is rising. Canadians will likely continue to use alcohol or other drugs to self-medicate and cope. Medical research consistently finds that alcoholism and mental health crises go hand-in-hand. Mental illnesses and stress lead to drinking, which in turn exacerbates the mental health crisis. But out of the Canadians who would like to get help for their mental health, 30% cite lack of affordability as a barrier. Better funding for Canadian mental health resources that lowers the price of admission to the most vulnerable Canadians is a much more effective way to address citizens’ cries for help.
Regarding alcohol or other substances, our public health strategy cannot be confined to telling Canadians to consume less. It generates the entirely wrong response. We need policies and programs that get to the root of Canadians’ problems — namely, better mental health funding for those who need it.
