I was feeling bad enough about not "staying dry" for even a few days in January when these headlines began pouring from various media sources. You will have seen them as well: "It's Time to Put Cancer Warning Labels on Alcohol, Experts Say;" Canada's New Guidelines For Alcohol Say 'No Amount' Is Healthy;" "Even a Little Alcohol Can Harm Your Health" and "Yes, Even if it's a Bloody Caesar With Extra Celery: Why Even Just a Little Alcohol is a Risk." Sobering news indeed, especially since we would have to be less prideful about having invented the "Bloody Caesar."
Readers of MM will know that I tend to be contrarian, and many of them are likely to be drinkers, so they will not be surprised if I take the side of the imbibers on this issue, and are likely to be pleased, as well, if they are drinkers themselves. Apart from arguing that, while alcohol may be bad for us, it does make us feel better, I will provide an article that you may have overlooked because of all those others which tended to be on the front page.
It would be unfortunate if all of this negative publicity forced the L.C.B.O. stores to return to the establishments they once were, or if we were to lose their magazine. I recall what they were like and a description was recently provided, so I don't have to come up with one:
"Looking back, I’m struck by how Canada’s approach to alcohol and cigarettes has almost reversed since I was a student back in the late 1970s.
At that time, I worked part-time in the last of what the Liquor Control Board of Ontario called conventional stores. Back then, the L.C.B.O. took the “control” part of its name seriously. Its older stores did everything possible to make people avoid them. Aside from some dusty display bottles of selected wines, all of the merchandise was hidden away behind a counter. Customers had to search out what they wanted to buy on lists of everything in the store that were behind glass panels, and write down the product’s name, brand number (Mateus rosé was 1086 B) and price. Then shoppers passed their slips to a cashier who, after receiving payment, turned it over to a clerk like me who fetched and bagged the goods.
I must confess that my colleagues and I were sometimes less than friendly. We were also repeatedly reminded not to give recommendations or advice to customers — they were strictly on their own.
But, conversely, smoking in offices and shops, including L.C.B.O. stores, was rampant at that time. Cigarette makers sponsored sports and cultural events, and their ads and products dominated corner stores and even some pharmacies.
Now it’s cigarettes that are hidden away in stores behind blank cabinets, and they come in generic, government-mandated packaging with gruesome photos of tobacco’s health effects. All forms of advertising by the tobacco advertising are a distant memory."
An Alternative Account
The article that was buried under all of the temperance ones is a temperate one arguing that the suggestions offered by the sermonizers need to be subjected to some scrutiny. It is found in the Globe and Mail, which is more expensive than MM, so you may not have seen it. The author of it will, I hope, forgive me for reproducing portions of it. He is a professor at Brock University and the article is found here: "Canada's Drastic New Alcohol Guidelines Demand a Closer Look," Globe and Mail, Jan. 20, 2023. You should have a closer look and not rely on my snippets.
Professor Malleck begins by noting that he is not a generally a critic of public health measures, but that he is "wary of generalized recommendations of behaviour change based upon narrowly selected evidence from a cohort that sounds increasingly like the 19th-century temperance movement." He also raises some issues about the 6,000 studies that were used, and notes as well:
"Often, too, these kinds of studies involve looking at a broad cohort of people and seeing if those with a certain condition were more likely to have been drinkers. If researchers are only looking for drinking as a factor, it can be easy to miss other potential contributors. We don’t know, for instance, whether they spent their time drinking in smoky bars or restaurants (back when that was allowed), or did so while eating less healthy foods; these factors are often marginalized when alcohol becomes the focus."
"The CCSA also presents the relative risk, rather than the absolute risk, of developing the various conditions. According to its data, consuming three and a half drinks a day increases your risk of developing larynx cancer by nearly 100 per cent, which sounds shocking, and is presented in a table with scary red shading. But larynx cancer, which is mostly related to smoking, was diagnosed in roughly 0.0197 per cent of Canadians in 2022. Many of the other cancers the CCSA associates with alcohol also have low incidence rates. And everyone has a different level of risk for various conditions, based on factors including lifestyle and genetics."
He also hints that perhaps one should consider that the results provided by the CCSA, might be like the ones about alcohol we would expect if they were coming from MADD.
"We should also consider researcher perspective. The CCSA is focused on harm-first, which is less a criticism than a fact: Although its name emphasizes “substance use and addiction,” its focus is on the negative side of “use.” Its job is to look for harm in the name of health. Through this lens, potential benefits don’t track."
And indeed, the CCSA made its recommendations without consideration of the potential (and well-documented) positive effects of alcohol on the lives of individuals, nor the potential harms caused by excessive and patronizing recommendations in the name of “for your own good” science.
These are important considerations, because human research on a population level (as compared with studies where all complicating factors are controlled in a lab, something you can’t do with long-term human research for legal and ethical reasons) is a point of contention among scholars. Although the CCSA does mention, near the end of the report, the considerable limitations to its conclusions, they do not seem to affect the urgency or excessiveness of its recommendations.
There is more, but because of copyright restrictions, I will just note his conclusion:
"Without considering the potential dangers of such advice, and the potential benefits around moderate drinking, the CCSA recommendations seem worse than useless. They’re reckless."
If the prohibitionists have their way, we may all have to head to the new cannabis dispensaries.
Sources:
Here is the report, "Canada's Guidance on Alcohol and Health," by the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction.
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