The Ontario Public Health Association … cites multiple studies showing that increases in the number of places where alcohol can be bought in Ontario, and in other jurisdictions, have already led to more consumption and more of the harms that come with it, such as suicides, drunk driving, emergency-room visits and higher rates of cancer.
I enjoy booze, but I like that it’s hard to get. I don’t need any more encouragement to mess up my liver.
Isn’t that his plan, though, to make us all stoned and drunk as much as possible to ignore what he’s doing to our province?
I’m almost convinced Trudeau did the weed in the beginning for similar reasons. Though I support what Doug is doing here, and what Trudeau did regarding weed, I do like to entertain the conspiracy theory thinking too. The less sober society is the easier it is to make bad policy decisions without as much pushback :D
We legalized weed because a) people who got in at the ground floor got rich, and b) it’d hopefully get everyone to forget about his other keystone promise: electoral reform.
Fuckers like Fantino who spent decades demonizing and criminalizing us, making all sorts of outrageous moral judgements towards us, warping public policy and brainwashing the olds, but then he’s poised with millions of dollars to exploit us the moment it’s legal.
It’s sad that our regulations about alcohol sales are so restrictive, but it’s unfortunately very necessary because of how our built environment exists. It’s correlated with drunk driving deaths because there’s not enough ways to get home that aren’t driving. We can’t really fix one without the other. I’d love to have a European-style picnic with wine I bought at the store on the corner, but that means at least 10% of the people on the road are going to be drunk driving at any given time which isn’t ideal.
I lived in an EU city in the mid/late 00s, and one of the nicest things was never having to worry about who was the DD. It wasn’t a big city, and quite compact. Walk 15 minutes and multiple pub and restaurant options. The equivalent of CAD$25 including tip would get you and 3-4 friends out and back to a respectable chunk of the city.
Yo can buy wine and beer in corner stores and drink in parks all over Quebec and it’s not a problem. Ontario isn’t different, except for the persistent smell of prohibition (which started in Ontario!).
They said the same thing about weed stores and there hasn’t been any increase in accidents.
Those who want to drink will drink, making it more accessible won’t change that. It’ll be nice not having to drive multiple kilometres to get a sixpack.
There’s also the increased suicides, emergency room visits, and cancer rates.
Access to alcohol is fine, but it shouldn’t be encouraged. A little bit of friction discourages access, and helps people moderate themselves.
I’ve lived in quite a few places in my life and those that have the worst alcohol problems are the most restrictive ones. Restricting means more binge drinking, there’s a lot of empirical evidence showing that.
Perhaps it’s high time our government stops treating us like irresponsible children.
The relationship probably isn’t causal!! How do you know that it isn’t simply the case that the places with the worst alcohol problems adopt the strongest restrictions?
“I don’t like feeling like someone is treating me like a child,” is both an unhelpful way of interpreting the situation – no one is treating anyone like a child, they are treating them like human beings who are subject to addiction and lapses in judgement while intoxicated (so much worse than children) – and also a really poor and selfish reason to inflict the negative effects that do correlate with increased availability on other people.
This means we’d actually have to make our justice system actually punish drunk and careless driving. The best way to commit murder in Canada is with a car, you will get out in a couple of years!
Give Ford an inch and he’ll have crack in the convenience stores too.
I’m in favour of this, if for no other reason than the Beer Store needs to die, or at the least the sweetheart deal with the province needs to. Absolutely ludicrous that a company owned by foreign corporations is granted a monopoly over the sales of 12 and 24 packs of beer and distribution rights to restaurants and bars. They’ve done far too good a job of fooling the public into thinking it’s government run while they fleece us and lobby away our choice.
Not worth it. Add a bunch of actual societal issues to fix an ideological issue (oh no, a foreign capitalist instead of a domestic one) that won’t actually benefit anyone here.
This feels like pearl clutching to me…are there any stats to support that things are measurably worse in Quebec where they’ve had beer in convenience stores for ages?
Are you seriously asking if the FRENCH drink more than Ontario, the most boring and repressed place in all of Canada? I mean I don’t know but my gut says yes?
Okay, let me google that for you… In 2021-2022, Canadians drink 3.9 beers a week. Ontarians drink 3.7 beers a week, and Québécois drink 4.3 beers a week. So yes, there is a significant difference, but I am not qualified to say why, and I’m not likely to accept that you are, either.
Incidentally, I also learned that ten years ago governments in Canada earned $441 of tax revenue a year from alcohol from each drinking age Canadian. That’s not nothing. So DoFo might believe he has an incentive to increase drinking to improve his short term outlook, rather than actually looking out for our best interests.
The Beer Store is a societal issue. It puts the binge drinker’s special – 24 bottles of beers for the evening – up front and centre, without much indication that you can buy singles from behind the Soviet-era counter. The data is fairly clear that people drink less when the beer is sold in small quantities (e.g. by the individual can, as is typical for craft beer). The first step in seeing reform is starting.
Nothing that sees people consuming more alcohol is a good policy decision. Treatment for addiction in Ontario is pathetic and I feel pretty safe guessing none of this new revenue will be going to that. DoFo is like the asshole ex-husband that spoils the kids with stuff that isn’t good for them they’re not usually allowed to have. When meanwhile we’re being killed by grocery barons that Ontario is in bed with.
