Retail Alcohol Monopolies: Recommendations

Recommendations
 
In light of the associations among alcohol availability, rates of consumption and drinking-related problems, and considering the unique role that monopolies can play in controlling drinking-related harm, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health offers five recommendations.

• Governments should maintain and strengthen provincial alcohol monopolies as a means of preventing alcohol-related problems.
• Ontario and other provincial governments should ask the federal government to reject requests from the European Union or other parties to the WTO to remove the exception for provincial alcohol monopolies from the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) or other trade agreements.
• The federal government of Canada should seek formal recognition in international trade agreements of the status of alcohol as a unique and potentially harmful commodity.  It should also seek to maintain the right of government agencies to regulate domestic alcohol markets for the sake of public health, and to use government monopolies as a central tool to achieve this goal.
• Public health objectives must become integral parts of provincial and federal mandates and policies on alcohol. Retail alcohol monopolies should explicitly recognize their public health mandate and act accordingly.
• The retail distribution of alcohol should be under monopoly control with a strong mandate to control and prevent alcohol problems through regulation.

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