Mr. Speaker, I cannot imagine a time when I will ever want to promote the health benefits of drinking alcohol. That is not what we are all about. When we consider that 3,000 to 5,000 children are being born with birth defects every year and it is costing Canada $15 billion each and every year for additional health care, social programs and criminal justice costs, we have to deal with the health problems now.
The member talks about targeting young people. In June 2003 the National Centre on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University in the United States did a research study, along with the Betty Ford Centre Foundation. What they found was that 19.5% of the purchasers of beverage alcohol were underage youth and 30.5% were adults who were abusing alcohol. When we add it together we find that over half of the beverage alcohol sales in the United States were to underage drinkers and abusers of alcohol.
We have much more work to do. Even with regard to the tobacco strategy, the studies had shown that if people did not start smoking by age 19, chances were they would never smoke. That is why the strategy was aimed at young people, why so many good things have happened in that respect and why substantial progress has been made.
Targeting young people, yes, but we cannot give women mixed messages about consuming alcohol during pregnancy. It is extremely important that we be very clear. Motherisk and the Hospital for Sick Children also came out with research in which they said that the incidence of alcohol consumption during pregnancy is actually 10 times higher than they previously thought through interviews with mothers. The research is clear.