People in BC drinking more than usual: prof
Posted December 20, 2015 11:50 am.
Last Updated December 20, 2015 11:54 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – Have you found yourself drinking a bit more than you have in past years?
New numbers from the University of Victoria point to a spike in alcohol consumption here in our province.
“There’s been what we noticed is quite an uptick in the most recent year,” says professor Tim Stockwell with UVic’s Centre for Addiction Research. “We get this data annually, and it’s the largest increase we’ve seen in consumption we’ve seen in about 12 years, year-to-year.”
According to the data, we’re chugging 528 beers each per year — or if you’re into fermented fruits, one hundred bottles of vino.
That’s a trend that’s not in line with the rest of the country, where drinking appears to be on the decline.
“[Consumption] seems to be going down in the rest of Canada and they’re going up here in BC,” says Stockwell. “It looks suspiciously like making the stuff more available and cheaper is responsible for some of this.”
Stockwell says it’s difficult to know exactly why our drinking is up this much, but points out this spike has come as the province has loosened liquor laws.
In 2013, there were 1,281 alcohol-related deaths in our province.
