2024-07-14 from theconversation.com

The public costs of alcohol

Federal and provincial governments derive revenue from taxing alcohol and, in most provinces, selling it directly in publicly owned liquor stores. In the 2022-2023 fiscal year, governments earned $13.6 billion from the control and sale of alcohol.

But those earnings were considerably less than public spending on health care and criminal justice, and the economic loss of production, caused by drinking across the country.

My recent research published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs looked at the shortfall between spending and revenue between 2007 and 2020. This “alcohol deficit” is substantial and growing: it expanded by 122 per cent in real-dollar terms across the study period, beginning at $2.9 billion in 2007 and reaching an all-time high of $6.4 billion in 2020. 

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