UVic report calls on BC to use HST as an opportunity to reduce

spiralling alcohol-related deaths

A new report from the University of Victoria’s Centre for Addictions Research (CARBC) suggests that BC’s introduction of the harmonized sales tax (HST) provides a golden opportunity to reverse recent increases in alcohol-related deaths and hospitalizations.

Since 2002, on average, BC drinkers aged 15 and up increased their consumption of alcohol from 475 to 525 standard drinks per year. Recorded liver cirrhosis deaths, most of which are caused by alcohol, have increased 39 per cent over the same period while total alcohol-related deaths in BC are now approaching 2,000 per year. CARBC’s Alcohol Pricing, Public Health and the HST: Proposed Incentives for BC Drinkers to Make Healthy Choices suggests there is an urgent need to improve policy responses to head off this troubling trend.

The report, which has been shared with Premier Gordon Campbell and members of his cabinet, recommends: setting and enforcing a minimum price per standard drink and applying it to all products ($1.50 in liquor stores and $3 in bars and restaurants), altering mark-ups to decrease the price of low-alcohol-content beverages and increase the price of high-alcohol-content beverages, and indexing minimum prices and mark-ups to inflation to ensure that alcohol does not continue to become cheaper over time relative to other goods.

“The government collects liquor taxes with one hand but pays out more for the harms from alcohol misuse with the other,” says CARBC Senior Policy Analyst Dr. Gerald Thomas, lead author of the report.

CARBC’s report is supported by international research showing that consumers of alcohol are very sensitive to price. Rather than proposing across-the-board increases in price, the report recommends targeting cheap high-strength drinks and creating incentives for producers, retailers and drinkers to, in turn, manufacture, promote and drink low-alcohol-content drinks. The BC Liquor Distribution Branch determines the price in its own liquor stores as well as the wholesale price paid by private distributors.

“The BC government has a golden opportunity to reduce the many varieties of alcohol-related harm by encouraging drinkers to make healthier choices,” adds CARBC Director Dr. Tim Stockwell, who co-authored the report.

The CARBC report will be released at a public forum attended by over 200 policy advisers, researchers, health professionals and other interested parties on Dec. 11 at UBC Robson Square, Vancouver. The report and the conference agenda can be viewed online at www.carbc.ca.