Drinking and the Holidays

Alcohol is a big part of many social gatherings over the holidays. Keeping track of how much you are drinking can sometimes be tricky especially if:

·       you don’t normally measure your drinks,
·       you enjoy mixed drinks, or
·       you choose beverages that come in larger size containers. 

When it comes to alcohol content, all drinks are not created equal.

So how much is “one drink”?  KFL&A Public Health now has a supply of magnets like these, depicting standard drink sizes.  Email us here to order.  Another useful tool is the Home Bartending Challenge created by the LCBO.  Try your hand at pouring standard drinks in different sized glasses.  Not as easy as it looks!

Finally, if you or someone you know is concerned about their drinking, or if you simply want to know how your drinking compares to others, Check Your Drinking and find out.

This will be the last blog post before the holidays. Posts will begin again in the New Year.  All the best for a healthy 2013! 

It Starts Here Alcohol Report Now Available

We are pleased to announce that the It Starts Here report is now available for download here.  Hard copies will be available soon for distribution.  Please contact cathy.edwards@kflapublichealth.ca for a copy.

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The cost of a drink – alcohol pricing policies and public health

When discussing the issue of alcohol pricing, many people feel that “alcohol costs enough” especially in comparison to other areas in Canada and the U.S. The reality is that policies which impact the price of alcohol are among the most powerful interventions for reducing consumption and related harm.  When prices are lowered, people drink more.  When prices rise, people decrease their consumption.  Not only should alcohol prices be indexed to inflation, setting minimum prices on alcohol based on alcohol content would provide an incentive for consumers to purchase lower alcohol products, particularly consumers such as young adults, who are price sensitive.

 

52% of Kingston respondents agreed or strongly agreed that the price of alcohol should be based on its alcohol content. (Public Opinion Survey of Alcohol Use in Kingston, 2012)

 
While Ontario scores well as far as indexing prices to inflation and mandating minimum retail prices for different categories of alcohol, Saskatchewan has been one of the first jurisdictions to implement minimum pricing linked to the amount of pure alcohol in each product.  Here’s what they found:

• By increasing the price of high alcohol content products, Saskatchewan saw a 12.6% decline in the sale of these products and a corresponding decrease in police calls for public intoxication.
• In addition to a decline in alcohol consumption of 135,000 litres of absolute alcohol, Saskatchewan saw a revenue increase of $9.4 million in the year following the price changes.

A new research series on Alcohol Price Policy in Canada has just been released by the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse.  The author, Dr. Gerald Thomas concedes that polices such as this are unpopular and are often perceived as “punishing the many for the sins of the few”.  However, he goes on to say that policies such as these (both population level and targeted policies) are needed to effectively reduce all types of alcohol-related harm in Canadian communities.

On December 10^th in Toronto a number of researchers from Ontario, BC and the UK will be speaking at a public seminar in Toronto entitled “Alcohol pricing and public health in Canada: Saving lives while raising government revenues?” This event is sponsored by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, the Centre for Addictions Research of BC and the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse.