Beer cans are stacked as props in front a display of milk at a press availability attended by Ontario Premier Doug Ford at a convenience store in Toronto, Dec. 14, 2023.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
Too often, public health proponents come across as hectoring, moralistic absolutists.
The latest case in point: Their vehement opposition to allowing sales of beer, wine and ready-to-drink cocktails in convenience stores.
By Sept. 5, eligible convenience stores in Ontario will be able to sell alcohol-based products – only a century after that became legal in neighbouring Quebec. (To date, 4,043 Ontario convenience stores have been licenced to sell alcohol when the new rules kick in, according to the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario.)
Reading some of the reaction from public health and disease-advocacy groups, you would think the end of the world was nigh.
We’re being told, and asked to believe that, drinking rates will increase markedly, ER visits and hospitalizations will rise in numbers, and deaths will too. But are people really going to drink themselves blind because their favourite intoxicants will soon be available a little closer to home?
The evidence underlying these dire warnings isn’t that strong.
Alcohol is already widely available in the province: The LCBO, the state-run liquor distributor in Ontario, has 669 retail stores and another 400 “convenience outlets” (counters within grocery and convenience stores in small towns). There are also over 400 Beer Store retail outlets, and over 17,000 licenced bars and restaurants that sell alcohol. You can also get alcohol delivered directly to your home via Uber Eats. (Or as anyone knows in a small town, a well-tipped cab driver.)
What will adding convenience stores to the mix do other than make it a bit easier to buy a six-pack on Saturday night or a bottle of wine when heading out to a friend’s house? After all, it’s the norm in many jurisdictions elsewhere in Canada and countries around the world. Maybe people will drive a little less – and not drive drunk – if they walk to the corner store.
What about young people getting easier access to alcohol? Well, they don’t seem to have much trouble now. And corner stores already “card” for things like smokes, vapes and lotto tickets, so coolers shouldn’t be any different.
One of the main arguments against expanding the availability of boozy drinks is that “no amount of alcohol is safe.”
In arguing against beer and wine in corner stores, health groups are reminding us that alcohol is deadly. It is responsible for 18,000 deaths a year, according to the Canadian Public Health Association, 6,202 of those deaths in Ontario alone. Statistics Canada, on the other hand, says there are 3,875 alcohol-related deaths annually. (We can save the discussion of how death statistics are calculated for another day.)
But will deaths really increase because buying booze is slightly easier? Doubtful.
Alcohol is poison, it’s true. But we put all kinds of poisons into our bodies – beer, tobacco, cannabis, and other drugs, prescription and otherwise. We breathe them in the air, too.
Public health can help people protect themselves from the worst harms. But adults don’t need to be overprotected from themselves and their choices.
Most people drink moderately and responsibly. Public health should know better than anyone else that it’s the dose that makes the poison.
Convenience stores already sell all kinds of things that are of dubious benefit. Beer cans, wine bottles and vodka coolers will take their place alongside cigarettes, vapes, pop, chips, beef jerky sticks, Kraft Dinner, lottery tickets and other items that are bad for our health.
Convenience stores are good for neighbourhoods. They are community hubs. They help counter food deserts. They are often small businesses run by hard-working folks – and why shouldn’t they share in the spoils of our love of booze too?
Three-quarters of Canadians drink alcohol. Most of them want more convenient access. It’s happening because it’s politically desirable.
Public health officials should read the room. Instead of opposing the expansion of alcohol sales to convenience stores by making outrageous claims – for example, that the annual costs of the harms associated with alcohol “are greater than tobacco and opioids combined” in Ontario (smoking is many times more hazardous than drinking) – health groups should be promoting their call for a more robust alcohol strategy.
Better labelling, minimum price rules, easier access to rehab for problem drinkers, reducing impaired drinking and alcohol-related trauma are all reasonable public health goals. And they have a far better chance of political uptake.
With alcohol, as with other drugs, public health should be helping people figure out the risks (and rewards), and help them find some balance and relative safety, not being judgy, prohibitionist Chicken Littles.