Welcome to CCSA’s new series, The Alcohol and Drug Situation in Canada. In this series, the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA) will publish short, evidence-based briefs on current and emerging issues in the field of substance use health. Written by subject matter experts, articles will highlight the Canadian context and inform the work and lives of all substance use health experts, including Traditional Knowledge, Western medicine, and lived and living expertise.
Their first publication in the series, Alcohol Consumption and Adherence to Canada’s Guidance on Alcohol and Health, breaks down the average alcohol consumption of people in Canada using data from the 2019 Canadian Alcohol and Drugs Survey. Key findings from the article include:
- People who drink alcohol in Canada consume an average of more than 13 standard drinks per week (SD/week), which far exceeds amounts considered low risk (1–2 SD/week) or moderate risk (3-6 SD/week).
- People who drink alcohol in Canada experience substantially more health risks compared with people who consume less alcohol. This includes alcohol-related deaths; an increased likelihood of developing cancer, liver diseases, cardiovascular diseases and lower respiratory infections; and greater incidence of injuries from violence and motor vehicle accidents.
- There is a wide spectrum of alcohol use at the individual level. For example, most people aged 15 years and older in Canada (52%) reported drinking linked to no- or low-risk levels, while about one-third (34%) reported drinking linked to high-risk. This high-risk drinking was substantially higher for males (41%) than females (28%).
- Canada’s Guidance on Alcohol Health (CGAH) provides a new way to view, analyze and address alcohol consumption in Canada. This view extends to both individual drinking patterns — categorized by CGAH risk zones — and the relationship between population-level alcohol consumption and the guidance.
The updated data from the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA) provides an important lens into how much alcohol is consumed across Canada and how closely Canadians adhere to Canada’s new guidance on alcohol and health. The report confirms what many FASD prevention professionals already observe anecdotally: a significant portion of the population engages in alcohol use that falls within moderate to high-risk zones, and awareness of the health risks associated with even small amounts of alcohol is still low.
This research reinforces the importance of community-based, trauma-informed FASD prevention that includes education about low-risk drinking guidelines, the role of partners and social networks in prevention, and the need to challenge long-standing misconceptions about alcohol and health.