THE PROVINCE [of Ontario] sells more alcohol than other provinces just as it sells more textbooks. Until recently, Canadian children were socialized into a society where alcohol may be consumed in a church to symbolize communion with God, but the far less harmful substance cannabis was demonized. The cannabis plant was termed the evil weed and its users faced social stigma. Although cannabis is now the world’s third-most most popular recreational drug (after alcohol and nicotine), according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime,^[1] simple possession of cannabis brought risks of severe legal persecution until June 2018. Then Canada partially legalized the substance, having studied the idea since 1969.

With legalization of cannabis, Canadian society is moving ahead at the social equivalent of warp speed. Wine, albeit only from Ontario, is now available at Ontario supermarkets along with beer. Bureaucrats and politicians—including a former hard-line Toronto police chief and federal Conservative cabinet minister—who earlier would have imprisoned young people for consuming recreational drugs and objected to “normalizing” marijuana use, are showing up on drug company boards of directors.^[2]

Canadians drink about 61 per cent more alcohol than the global average, according to historical addiction research, consuming an average of nearly ten litres per year.^[3] In only five of 241 countries do people drink more. One factor may be that Ontario leaves drug education largely to drug suppliers: producers and distributors are left to explain the benefits and consequences their products might provide. In the 1960s and 1970s, the province rejected textbooks written by experts that would have helped students learn the risks and benefits associated with a range of drugs including alcohol. The Ontario Ministry of Education’s suppression of more objective texts no doubt dumbed down drug education for adolescents, leaving them less prepared to interact with government and freelance dealers. The censors could always provide a ready excuse.

Awkwardly, the Government of Ontario is the province’s leading drug dealer as well as its educator. The province’s arms-length Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) delivered a $2.37 billion dividend in fiscal 2018–19. According to the industry association Beer Canada, formerly known as the Brewers Association of Canada, its brewed products paid an estimated $5.3 billion to 149,000 full-time employees and contributed $5.7 billion in government taxes.^[4] The association connects 1 in 120 Canadian jobs to brewing.

The economic benefit to Canada is unmistakable. Perhaps that’s why, historically, the LCBO has used its advertising budget to suggest a moral distance between the thousands of flavoured ethanol products it sells and the variety of other psychoactive substances available from other suppliers. The LCBO spent $38 million marketing alcohol in 2018–19. Its pictures of backyard barbecues and good times can suggest that alcohol is not a drug, as can the phrasing “drugs and alcohol.” But of course alcohol is a drug. And there are economic costs and benefits. Depending where in the economy an individual is employed, alcohol sales could be plotted as a benefit or cost. Perspective matters.

According to a groundbreaking 2010 report published in The Lancet medical journal, alcohol is one of the most harmful recreational drugs available, legal or restricted.^[5] Pharmacology professor David Nutt and his collaborators graded twenty substances including heroin, crack and powder cocaine, tobacco and LSD on two different scales to evaluate the harm drugs caused users and the negative effects on people in the users’ vicinity. The researchers found crack cocaine and methamphetamines to be the most destructive to individual users, graded on physical, psychological, and social factors. But alcohol resulted in more damage to nonusers than any other substance. Dangers included injury and family adversities as well as economic and community costs.

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EVALUATION SUMMARIES

Everything You Should Know about Drugs and the Canadian Scene, 1972, Sheila Gormely

4 FOR vs 1 AGAINST

Drugs, Society and Personal Choice, 1971, Harold Kalant and Oriana Josseau Kalant

5 FOR vs 1 AGAINST

Drugs & The Law: The Canadian Scene, 1969, Reginald Whitaker

5 FOR vs 1 AGAINST

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 Sheila Gormely’s Drugs and the Canadian Scene was approved by four of five reviewers but rejected by the ministry for profanity in 1972.^[6]  “Jesus Christ” and “god damn” both made appearances in her textbook, from which students apparently needed protection. The Textbooks Branch reckoned that since Gormely’s book had been listed in its own Drugs: A Guide to Learning Resources,^[7] there was no need to make it more widely available to educators. Nowhere did the ministry’s public guidelines state that textbooks found in a brief four-page bibliography would be denied a Circular 14 listing. Five of six reviewers approved Reginald Whitaker’s Drugs and the Law: The Canadian Scene, but the government suppressed it.^[8] Drugs, Society and Personal Choice, by Doctors Harold and Oriana Kalant, was rejected by the ministry in 1971 despite recommendation by five of six reviewers and its assigned officer, W. D. A. McCuaig.^[9]

Publishers became aware of the ministry’s tendencies, which meant increased censorship across Canada. Even if Ontario’s Textbooks Branch rejected a text for that province’s use, other education ministries across the county might approve it, which would compensate publishers for their investment. But if publishers self-censored their books to win approval from a conservative Ontario government, the entire country would want for authentic Canadian voices.

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