It Starts Here: A Conversation about Alcohol in the City of Kingston

Here’s to good times.  To blue skies and Market Square.  To new friends and football games.  To patios and scenic shorelines.  The City of Kingston is a vibrant place to live, work, study and play.  Kingston’s story is one of a passionate and caring community. 

In fact, one of the values of the Sustainable Kingston plan is to ensure well-being – “...(to) create a sustainable community where all members of the community are able to meet their needs, advance their potential, and improve well being through healthy, safe, and fulfilling work and play”. 

From Public Health’s perspective, this is a shared value.  Ensuring the well-being and health of the community is central to the work of Public Health.  Great strides have been made in the City of Kingston in many areas, but there is an area in which we need to start having a serious conversation.  That area is alcohol, including current attitudes surrounding its use and misuse in our community.  Alcohol is so intricately woven into our social fabric that discussions surrounding it are often challenging, animated and personal. 

Many people drink alcohol to celebrate, to relax, to socialize, and to savour.  Some drink alcohol for courage, to forget, and to numb.  For others drinking alcohol is seen as a recreational activity where drinking games are the norm and drinking to get drunk is the ultimate goal. In a 2012 community alcohol survey, the most common reasons Kingston respondents gave for drinking alcohol included “for entertainment, to be sociable, and to relax”.  Ninety-eight percent of respondents believe entertainment is a common or very common reason to drink alcohol.  Still others drink alcohol because of loneliness, to escape and to forget their worries.  Eighty-four percent of respondents believe depression / loneliness is a common or very common reason to drink alcohol.²   Most of the time alcohol is simply a part of the good times - the fun evening out with friends, or the quiet dinner at home.  However, in far too many cases alcohol can be blamed for a good time gone wrong.   Why does this happen?   Do individuals simply need to take more responsibility and control their drinking, or do the environmental factors that encourage alcohol to be used in ways that are harmful, need to be addressed?

The cultural acceptance of alcohol use as recreation in our community perpetuates the myth that alcohol is an ordinary commodity.  However, as a commodity it is far from ordinary.  This report is intended to shed some light on a public health issue that continues to be downplayed in the popular media.  It’s time to begin a conversation, and examine the impact alcohol is having on individuals and the community at large and how we can create the conditions for alcohol use to only be a part of our good times.   It starts here.