SooToday received the following letter to the editor in response to this story: Stevenson slams Liberal alcohol tax, supports Conservative plan to repeal it.
The Conservatives can spin the numbers all they want, but in reality, reducing taxes on alcohol consumption is without question a great way to put Canadian taxpayers, people and communities into the hole of despair.
The current costs of substance abuse in Canada are significant. Alcohol alone costs the Canadian taxpayer $19.7 billion annually. It's almost twice that of tobacco ($11.2 billion).
Where do these costs come from? Health care, lost productivity, criminal justice system and others.
Health-care costs alone for alcohol abuse (not including the general health costs of consuming alcohol) are $6.3 billion annually. What are these costs?
- Day surgeries,
- Inpatient hospitalizations,
- Emergency department visits,
- Paramedic services,
- Specialized treatment for substance use disorders,
- Physician time and
- Prescription drugs.
Alcohol abuse creates preventable health-care delays, unnecessary costs, reduced quality of service and deaths within the health-care system alone.
If anyone wants to complain about the health-care system in any manner, the best place to start is preventing illness and disease, because most are preventable. Alcohol consumption and substance abuse is a good place to start.
Impaired driving alone costs Canadian taxpayers another $20.6 billion annually (2013). How?
- Lost earnings due to death or injury
- Medical costs
- Vehicle damage
- Police man-hours
- Courtroom resources
- Increased insurance rates
Don't the police have better things to do than to chase after preventable problems? Or businesses to compensate of lost productivity.
Ultimately, the only benefit from lower alcohol taxes will be more jobs . . . for lawyers, paramedics, doctors, insurance and pharmaceutical companies, psychologists, and police. Yes, they all add to the GDP.
But the real question is whether taxpayers should be subsidizing the loss of our loved ones, more health-care delays, and increasing taxes to create unnecessary jobs simply to deal with preventable problems?
It takes a special kind of person to pervert the avoidable and massive costs to society from alcohol consumption as a benefit, only to argue for lower consumption taxes.
Higher taxes on alcohol consumption are a good tool in the policy toolkit to save taxpayers money. And to save lives and quality of lives.
Current taxes are demonstrably a fraction of what they should be to be fair, economically justifiable and healthy. Anyone suggesting to remove those taxes to save taxpayers is simply spreading disinformation. So one needs to ask . . . 'why'?
Robert Rattle
Sault Ste. Marie