Pushing Alcohol While Health Experts Say Risk-Free Drinking Is a Myth

Wanting again, I’m struck by how Canada’s strategy to alcohol and cigarettes has nearly reversed since I used to be a scholar again within the late Nineteen Seventies.

At the moment, I labored part-time within the final of what the Liquor Management Board of Ontario referred to as typical shops. Again then, the L.C.B.O. took the “management” a part of its title significantly. Its older shops did every little thing doable to make folks keep away from them. Apart from some dusty show bottles of chosen wines, the entire merchandise was hidden away behind a counter. Clients needed to get hold of what they wished to purchase on lists of every little thing within the retailer that have been behind glass panels, and write down the product’s title, model quantity (Mateus rosé was 1086 B) and worth. Then buyers handed their slips to a cashier who, after receiving fee, turned it over to a clerk like me who fetched and bagged the products.

I need to confess that my colleagues and I have been typically lower than pleasant. We have been additionally repeatedly reminded to not give suggestions or recommendation to clients — they have been strictly on their very own.

However, conversely, smoking in workplaces and retailers, together with L.C.B.O. shops, was rampant at the moment. Cigarette makers sponsored sports activities and cultural occasions, and their adverts and merchandise dominated nook shops and even some pharmacies.

Now it’s cigarettes which might be hidden away in shops behind clean cupboards, and so they are available in generic, government-mandated packaging with grotesque pictures of tobacco’s well being results. All types of promoting by the tobacco promoting are a distant reminiscence.

In distinction, on the L.C.B.O. immediately, management has been dislodged by aggressive advertising and marketing and promotion. Lots of its shops are neatly designed, with enticing picket shelving and lighting just like what you may discover in a expensive clothes boutique. The board produces a free shiny journal about drinks, and meals to serve with them, and gives clients airline loyalty factors and reductions.

It’s not alone. Once I cross the river to Gatineau, Quebec, the provincially owned Société des alcools du Québec shops appear to be in a contest with their Ontario counterparts in relation to pleasing design, attractiveness and product promotion and discounting.