Taxes, stricter alcohol limits could help cut cost of alcohol abuse: reportAlcohol abuse costs every Canadian $463 a year, a new study finds, but could be cut if Ottawa lowered consumption by increasing liquor taxes and lowering blood-alcohol limits, among other policy changes.
The Avoidable Cost of Alcohol Abuse in Canada 2002 report released Wednesday by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto finds that health-care costs related to alcohol abuse are actually higher than those for cancer.
It proposes six interventions that it says would save 800 lives and approximately $1 billion per year, almost 26,000 years of life lost to premature alcohol-related deaths and more than 88,000 days of acute care in hospital annually.
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