Pot may curb alcohol abuse in P.A., says report
Some Prince Albert city councillors are balking at a suggestion that legalized pot could help reduce binge drinking in the city.
The city released it’s “alcohol strategy” this week, a culmination of years of work to document and offer ways to combat problems with underage and binge drinking.
However, some are taken aback by the report’s suggestion that legalized pot could help curb chronic alcohol abuse.
“I personally have concerns,” Coun. Rick Orr said. “I think it’s another one of the items that we have to deal with from a community addictions point of view.”
Other suggestions in the report include eliminating the city’s drive-thru liquor stores, cutting back the business hours of establishments where liquor is sold, and having more cultural training and education among young people about the dangers of drinking.
Orr said he supports moves toward restricting hours and getting rid of alcohol drive-thrus, but enforcement can only go so far.
“It could change the culture,” he said.
The numbers in the report are staggering. Prince Albert spends more money per capita on alcohol than anywhere else in the province. Youth in the city are more likely to binge drink than in most other places in Canada. Sixty-eight per cent of Grade 10 students who responded to a survey reported binge drinking. The national average is 50 per cent.
All that alcohol is having an impact on police and health care in the city.
With slightly more than 40,000 people, public intoxication accounts for 45 per cent of arrests on a daily basis. Over a three-year period from 2009 through 2012, police arrested 5,595 people solely for public intoxication. Those arrests cost the police service a whopping $2.5 million, according to the report.
But could marijuana really help a city that seems flooded with booze?
University of Saskatchewan researcher Lucas Richert said it’s worth discussion, but he hesitates to assert that legalizing pot will get people to drink less.
“I think that’s totally fair, and potentially useful. At the same time, certain cases demonstrate that marijuana legalization doesn’t lead to decreased alcohol consumption,” Richert said.
In Colorado, one of the U.S. states that have legalized recreational pot, booze sales have spiked, he noted.
Prince Albert city councillor Martin Ring, who was part of developing the alcohol strategy, said he honestly doesn’t know if legal pot would affect the level of alcohol abuse in the city.
His core philosophy is to get at the root social issues behind alcohol abuse and not necessary punish people who use alcohol responsibly — so he’s wary of looking at any legislative change as the silver bullet, he said.