(Link to CBC news clip here)
A group of researchers from the University of Victoria’s Centre for Addictions Research is urging the provincial government to raise the price on alcoholic beverages and make them less available. New research show per capita alcohol consumption in BC rising at nearly double the speed of the rest of Canada with resulting hospitalization from all this drinking up 17%. Full press release from UVIC here.
“One of the problems has been the low prices,” said centre director Dr. Tim Stockwell.
Now, it seems that the group’s main concern is rightfully with hard spirits, which shouldn’t be difficult for most people to understand. Personally, I’m not convinced that higher prices are the answer as I’ve never seen booze priced higher in any country I’ve ever been to nor access any sparser (the exceptions being Morocco and maybe China). My concern is that the government would inappropriately clump fine wine into this category of offenders. I can’t remember the last time I heard of someone being hospitalized from bingeing on Châteauneuf-du-Pape.
I’ll pray every night to Premier Gordon Campbell myself, that should the government announce a plan to combat these health concerns that involves any price or tax increase, wine will be left alone. The last thing wine drinkers in British Columbia need is to pay more.
The CBC ’s print article here.
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3 Responses:
December 9th, 2009 at 10:30 pm
I don’t mind lower prices crap being raised but then higher priced like lets say 50$ or more drop in taxes to 50%? like that is going to happen ah well
December 12th, 2009 at 9:54 pm
More expensive alcohol is already taxed at a lower percentage. Taxing lower cost alcohol even more will make alcohol taxation even more regressive than it already is. The answer, however, cannot be to raise the taxes on high end alcohol either or your effective marginal rate will become so prohibitive that either general revenues will probably decline or people who drink high end alcohol will bear a disproportionate burden of the social costs of alcohol consumption (which is probably already the case).
Further, this study is ridiculous in its methodology. There needs to be a far more robust look at the correlation of both alcohol consumption to ‘alcohol related injuries/deaths’ (there could theoretically be other causes besides an increase in alcohol consumption), and the correlation between pricing and consumption, assuming the previous study provides sufficient data to undergird a solid correlation. Without a broader range of metrics and a more robust analysis, this study is effectively useless.