{"id":89991,"date":"2024-06-27T05:00:38","date_gmt":"2024-06-27T09:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=89991"},"modified":"2024-06-26T16:38:46","modified_gmt":"2024-06-26T20:38:46","slug":"the-toronto-star-wants-ontario-to-adopt-scottish-booze-regulation-but-ignore-the-failure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2024\/06\/27\/the-toronto-star-wants-ontario-to-adopt-scottish-booze-regulation-but-ignore-the-failure\/","title":{"rendered":"The <em>Toronto Star<\/em> wants Ontario to adopt Scottish booze regulation (but ignore the failure)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/snowdon.substack.com\/p\/the-temperance-time-machine\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Toronto Star<\/em><\/a> always loves a good moral crusade, and if it also happens to fly in the face of whatever Premier Ford wants to do, then so much the better:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The <em>Toronto Star<\/em> is looking to Scotland to teach it how to reduce alcohol-related deaths. In an article titled &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thestar.com\/news\/world\/how-scotland-started-to-kick-its-alcohol-problem-and-what-ontario-could-learn-from-it\/article_1964e014-28ba-11ef-8235-776cebf3d1c7.html\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">How Scotland started to kick its alcohol problem \u2014 and what Ontario could learn from it<\/a>&#8220;, it pushes back on plans to liberalise Ontario&#8217;s state monopoly on alcohol retail, saying:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>Ontario officials say they are fulfilling a 2018 election promise to increase &#8220;choice and convenience for shoppers and support Ontario retailers, domestic producers and workers in the alcohol industry&#8221;.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>But <strong>Scotland has cut alcohol-related hospital admissions by 40 per cent and deaths by almost half<\/strong>. While in Ontario, alcohol-related admissions have risen by a third and deaths by almost half, according to the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>How did Scotland supposedly achieve this public health miracle?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>The key part of Scotland&#8217;s landmark policy was aimed at reducing drinking by introducing minimum unit prices to make drinking more expensive.<\/em>,\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Ontario already has minimum pricing and Scotland doesn&#8217;t have a state alcohol monopoly, so it is not obvious what lessons Ontarians are supposed to be learning, but put that to one side for a moment and consider the main claim.<\/p>\n<p>Anyone who has been following events in Scotland knows that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nrscotland.gov.uk\/files\/statistics\/alcohol-deaths\/2022\/alcohol-specific-deaths-22-report.pdf\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">alcohol-specific deaths<\/a> have risen since minimum pricing was introduced in 2018 and have generally risen since 2012 following a significant downturn in the years prior.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Scottish-deaths-due-to-alcohol-1979-2022.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Scottish-deaths-due-to-alcohol-1979-2022-853x357.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"853\" height=\"357\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-89992\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Scottish-deaths-due-to-alcohol-1979-2022-853x357.png 853w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Scottish-deaths-due-to-alcohol-1979-2022-480x201.png 480w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Scottish-deaths-due-to-alcohol-1979-2022-150x63.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Scottish-deaths-due-to-alcohol-1979-2022-768x322.png 768w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Scottish-deaths-due-to-alcohol-1979-2022.png 945w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 853px) 100vw, 853px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It is that drop between 2006 and 2012 that the <em>Toronto Star<\/em> must be referring to when it claims that deaths fell by &#8220;almost half&#8221; (actually a third). But the Scottish government didn&#8217;t pass any anti-alcohol legislation in those six years and it certainly didn&#8217;t have minimum pricing. The newspaper mentions that the drink-drive limit was cut, but that didn&#8217;t happen until 2014 and <a href=\"https:\/\/thecritic.co.uk\/the-pointlessness-of-pintlessness\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the evidence is clear<\/a> that it had no effect on road accidents.<\/p>\n<p>Since the <em>Toronto Star<\/em> doesn&#8217;t mention when the decline in alcohol-specific deaths took place, it is leading its readers to believe that it coincided with the introduction of minimum pricing and the lowering of the drink-drive limit. I call that lying.<\/p>\n<p>It is strangely fitting that Canadians are being lied to about the &#8220;success&#8221; of Scotland&#8217;s alcohol strategy since the Scottish public were conned into accepting minimum pricing, in part, on the basis of lies told about the &#8220;success&#8221; of minimum pricing in Canada. The neo-temperance academic Tim Stockwell, who is quoted in the <em>Star<\/em> article, published a series of studies in the 2010s making some absurd claims about minimum pricing that were parroted by campaigners in the UK. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Toronto Star always loves a good moral crusade, and if it also happens to fly in the face of whatever Premier Ford wants to do, then so much the better: The Toronto Star is looking to Scotland to teach it how to reduce alcohol-related deaths. In an article titled &#8220;How Scotland started to kick [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,84,9,10,28,53,131],"tags":[104,322,87,269,661,338],"class_list":["post-89991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-cancon","category-government","category-law","category-liberty","category-media","category-politics","category-wine","tag-booze","tag-nannystate","tag-ontario","tag-propaganda","tag-regulation","tag-scotland"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-npt","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89991"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89994,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89991\/revisions\/89994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}