Alcohol should be privatized and then heavily taxed to reduce addictions
To the Expositor:
Alcohol has a social net revenue loss of over 14 billion dollars from 2007 to 2020 with a $6 billion societal loss in 2020 alone. In Canada in 2020, governments generated CAD $13.3 billion in revenue from alcohol sales, but this was offset by $19.7 billion in social costs attributable to alcohol use. This “alcohol deficit” increased by 122.0 percent in real-dollar terms over the study period and reached a high of $6.4 billion in 2020.
In 2020, the magnitude of the alcohol used in Canada was 16.8 billion CSDs. Each of these drinks resulted in a public net deficit of $0.379. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38206668/.)
One thing LCBO workers do not know is math. They want jobs to sell a product that they know degrades society. Scenario: A known child abuser, while drunk, walks into a liquor store sober with his young child in tow and buys alcohol. The duty is to sell to them, right? They could be drunk drivers, spousal abusers, violent offenders, but that’s ok, because we need jobs…and money. That makes Canada lose everywhere else.
You can’t support nurses being overworked and also the LCBO. Alcohol is a poison. It has and continues to decimate homes and happy living environments. Every other department that has to deal with its negative effects does so with a deficit. Education. Health care. Justice. Alcohol should be privatized then massively taxed. Each of these drinks resulted in a public net deficit of $0.37 as stated in the study until the deficit is at zero. The first thing Ford should be doing on those drinks he wants to sell privately is double or triple any taxes on them.
Yes, people will stop drinking. Good.
Daniel Duval
Little Current
