Canada _ (Commonwealth Union) _ Last week’s announcement of updated recommendations for low-risk alcohol usage provoked discussion and, in some cases, annoyance. Immediately dismissing them, some Canadians said that the hazards were exaggerated.
The Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA) announced guidelines last Tuesday that declare that no quantity of alcohol is safe and advise men and women to limit their alcohol consumption to two drinks per week or less due to the rising number of alcohol-related fatalities in Canada. Dan Malleck, a health sciences professor at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, and a well-known expert on the history of drug and alcohol policy, remarked, “My first reaction was, ‘You’ve got to be joking!” Other Canadians requested better risk comparisons, stating that they wanted to know precisely how risky it is to consume more than the advised amount of glasses per week so they could make their own decisions.
“It would take thousands of instances to make any substantial difference if the risk of developing cancer rose by just 0.5%, 1.5%, or even 5%. I think people need to have this information to make educated decisions “Several people wrote to CBC News to provide their opinions after learning about the guide, including retired doctor Bob Burns of Nanaimo, British Columbia.
Burns, who had breast cancer, was interested in learning just how much alcohol causes each form of cancer. To compare the cancer risks of a few more tequila shots to other potentially fatal behaviors, however, is difficult from a scientific standpoint, according to the authors of the new guidelines. As co-chair of Canada’s Guidance on Alcohol and Health and an associate professor at the College of Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan, Peter Butt commented, “It is excellent that people are wrestling with the data.”
