Justin Trudeau’s government has introduced some of the strictest drinking guidelines in the West, just weeks before Canada decriminalized heroin and crack cocaine in parts of the country.
The government recommends that Canadians drink no more than two drinks a week. The new advice is a sharp drop from the previous recommendation of a maximum of 10 drinks a week for women and 15 drinks for men.
No amount of alcohol is safe, says the Canadian Center on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA) in a report released in January. The report concluded that “drinking less is better” and if you must drink, a maximum of two drinks each week is considered low-risk.
The move puts the country out of step with several other Western nations. The US recommends no more than two drinks a day for men and one for women, while the UK recommends no more than 14 “units” of alcohol – about six glasses of wine or a pint of beer – per week.
The new drug policy aims to stem the number of overdose deaths
At the same time, Canada took steps to liberalize its policy on harder drug use.
The government says the decision to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of cocaine, MDMA and opioids in the Western Territory was made in the hope of stemming a record number of overdose deaths. The policy will come into effect on January 31 and will apply to drug users over the age of 18.
Drug policy reform advocates say decriminalization is just the first in a long list of major changes needed to address Canada’s deadly opioid epidemic.
According to Dr. Bonnie Henry, British Columbia’s health officer, the drug possession policy is “an important step forward in removing that fear, shame and stigma. This is not one single thing that will turn this crisis around, but it will matter.”
But critics say the worst-case scenario is that it creates an incentive for drugs to be more powerful, thereby worsening the opioid crisis.
Some pointed to an inconsistency in the government’s approach to lower-end controlled substances.
Alcohol ‘largely socially acceptable in Canada’
According to the Global Drug Survey, in terms of drinking frequency, Canada does not rank among the top 10 countries globally, being below the world average. But on the “feeling drunk” measure, Canada jumped to sixth place, just behind the US and the UK.
“Alcohol is very much part of our culture in Canada, it’s normalized, it’s very much socially acceptable,” said Dr. Erin Hobin. “You’ll see alcohol at birthday parties, weddings or when you watch Hockey Night in Canada on a Saturday night,” she said, referring to the beloved weekly sports program.
An opinion piece in the Toronto Sun labeled the guidelines “the latest nanny lecture brought to you by the Trudeau government.”
Dan Malek, professor and medical historian of health sciences at Brock University, called the CCSA’s claims of increased risk from drinking “alarming and distorting,” saying “there is no place for ideologically driven neo-prohibitionist research in Canada’s policies.” in an article published in The Hamilton Spectator in December 2022.
The final report from January also describes various health risks associated with alcohol consumption. According to the CCSA, any more than two standard drinks per week leads to an increase in negative outcomes, including several types of cancer, heart disease and stroke.
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