Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Mississauga South for his dedication, commitment and perseverance in raising the issues around fetal alcohol spectrum disorder and about the impact of drinking, for example, underage drinking. It shows a tremendous amount of commitment to a cause. He has been very passionate about it.
The member for Hochelaga suggested that members of the NDP might occasionally resort to tippling. He is absolutely correct. I do enjoy a glass of wine on occasion, and as any responsible drinker, I am sure to use it in a responsible fashion.
In talking about the issue of labelling alcoholic beverages, many people who came before the committee said that this was absolutely not to be seen as a strategy.
Mr. Speaker, I just want to advise you and the House that I will be sharing my time with the member for Vancouver East.
When we were talking about labelling, many people saw labelling as one tool in a tool box. Many people saw labelling as a way to signal the government's intention to develop a full, comprehensive strategy around fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. Many people saw labelling as that critical first step, a signal that people were committed to ensuring that this issue stayed front and centre on the health agenda.
It was with great disappointment that I saw the bill killed at committee. It was with great disappointment I recognized that this is the third time this matter has come before the House.
Much has been made around the fact that there have not been any substantive studies to point to the fact that labelling would decrease alcohol consumption. The question that should have been put to people was whether labelling would increase awareness around the risks. It troubles me that we would not agree that labelling would increase awareness around the risks. We label many other products. Alcohol is one of the products that can have risks for a population and which does not carry a warning label. Much has also been made around the validity of studies.
It is interesting to me that hot off the press today a headline in the Saint John Telegraph Journal reads, “Few drinks a day may not protect against strokes, heart attacks”.
Much has been made about the benefits of alcohol but the article states:
The U.S. government warned Tuesday that a few drinks a day may not protect against strokes and heart attacks after all.
Some studies in recent years have touted the health benefits of moderate drinking. Some have even said that up to four drinks a day can significantly reduce the risk of heart disease in people 40 and older.
But researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analysed data from 250,000 Americans who participated in a 2003 telephone survey. They found that the non-drinkers had many more risks for heart disease -- such as being overweight, inactive, high blood pressure and diabetes -- than the moderate drinkers.
Based on those results, the agency could not say that moderate drinking actually was a factor in reducing the risk of heart disease.
The findings were published in the May issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine
“We're feeling the pendulum has swung way too far and Americans are getting sort of the wrong idea” on alcohol, said the study's lead author, Dr. Tim Naimi of the CDC's chronic diseases division. “The science around moderate drinking is very murky.”
The CDC has long worried about alcohol abuse in the United States. Studies have shown that drinking excessively - five or more drinks daily - can increase the risk of heart disease. The CDC says nearly one in three Americans drinks too much.
The agency said people should follow dietary guidelines that limit daily consumption to two drinks for men and a single drink for women.
Other groups -- such as the American Heart Association -- say drinking alcohol increases the dangers of alcoholism, high blood pressure, obesity, stroke, breast cancer, suicide and accidents.
There have been several studies, but it is very interesting that now there is a study which is saying wait a minute, maybe moderate drinking is not so great for us after all.
The only reason I have brought forward this study is that throughout the discussion at committee, people consistently said there was no conclusive evidence that labelling would affect drinking behaviour.
The committee heard evidence from a variety of sources. One of the groups that came forward was the Canadian Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. In April 2001 it indicated, “Warning labels must not be considered in isolation, since knowledge alone rarely results in changed behaviour. Warning labels reinforce rather than replace other forms of education. Labelling should be seen as just one part of a broader public health effort to reduce alcohol related harm. That effort should also include ongoing public education, responsive public policy and availability of effective treatment services”.
That was just one of many witnesses who said that labelling in their view was an essential part of a comprehensive strategy.
The position statement of the Australian Drug Foundation in March 2003 stated that labelling provides a counterweight to alcohol marketing which promotes that alcohol is safe. It said that labelling also protects the fundamental right of the consumer to know the risks of the product.This is a critical point which seems to have often escaped the discussion. We are talking about the fundamental right of consumers to know the risks of a product.
The Motherisk program at the Hospital for Sick Children also saw labelling as a critical part of the strategy. It said, “The alcohol industry first denied the existence of FAS and later did very little to prevent it. The main reason that they oppose warning labels is their fear of losing revenue. They claim that they oppose warning labels because they are not an effective method of FAS prevention. That contradicts their lack of effort to find other means. Warning labels are an effective way in changing the culture of drinking, similar to the change in attitude toward smoking, or drinking and driving. In the implementation of the alcohol warning label, nothing can be lost, only gained”.
Another issue which often was not discussed was that people talked about labelling being ineffective. The industry spends a substantial amount of money designing labelling to encourage drinking of their particular product. If labelling is not effective, why would the industry spend so much money labelling bottles?
That issue came up in a study at the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University in the U.S. in February 2003. This study was done in the U.S. so I am not suggesting that Canadian industry does the same thing.
The study said, “They saw action as being urgent. The decline in alcohol consumption among minors over the past 20 years appears to have promoted campaigns such as the increase in marketing malternatives and gelatin shots, Zippers, both appealing to children, and the efforts of the liquor industry to mount major advertising campaigns on television”.
We have also seen all kinds of different labelling. Some of the samples we saw at committee really encouraged some behaviour that many of us thought was highly questionable.
A number of people went before the CDC, including three surgeons general. Those three surgeons general called on the alcohol industry to include in its advertising and product labels “clear warnings of the dangers of underage drinking and adult excessive drinking”. They also called for “endowing an independent foundation with no ties to the alcohol industry to work exclusively to curb underage drinking”.
The Betty Ford Foundation said that the findings demonstrated that the alcohol industry had an inherent conflict of interest between public health and industry profit.
I could go on with quotations at length. In 1992 the subcommittee on health in “Fetal Alcohol Syndrome: The Preventable Tragedy” said that government warning labels on containers of beverage alcohol sold in the country had been done since 1989. It was referring to the United States. It said that labelling had been happening in the United States since 1989 and the wheels of industry had not ground to a halt, despite the fact that the industry had to put labels on bottles.
It is ironic that Canadian brewers are shipping alcohol with labels to the United States. If it is good enough for the U.S., it should be good enough for Canada.