Alcohol is a ‘neurological sledgehammer’ that is harming society in more ways than we realize

Posted on June 23, 2025 in Health Debates

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TheStar.com – Opinion
June 23, 2025.   By Jim Coyle, Contributor

There’s a common denominator hiding in plain sight in some of our most horrifying recent news events.

A former British soldier was sentenced this month to four years and three months in prison for delivering three lethal blows to the head of a Winnipeg entrepreneur in a Toronto bar in 2023.

In London, Ont., Superior Court Justice Maria Carroccia will deliver a verdict July 24 in the case of five former hockey stars charged with the 2018 sexual assault of a 20-year-old woman.

Last month, a trip to watch Victoria Day fireworks in Milton, Ont., turned tragic when three siblings were killed, their mother and another sibling injured, when the car in which they were travelling was hit by a speeding minivan while stopped at a red light.

The link?

Remove alcohol impairment from those evenings and life would likely have unfolded much less terribly for those involved.

Both the British soldier and his victim had consumed copious amounts of alcohol the night of the latter’s death.

The events in London leading to a woman’s debasement, shattered pro hockey careers, and a scandal for Hockey Canada occurred after a night of heavy drinking by most of those involved.

In the Victoria Day horror, a 19-year-old driver from Georgetown, Ont., has been charged with three counts of impaired driving causing death.

Alcohol, that costliest of drugs, was apparently a key ingredient in all of these life-altering, life-ending nights.

In an article last year for The Conversation Canada, Adam Sherk, a scientist and professor of public health and social policy at the University of Victoria, wrote that as a socially acceptable and culturally mythologized drug, alcohol has “received an almost free pass when it comes to changes in policy and public opinion.”

While alarms about the opioid and fentanyl crises are loud and frequent, citizens and governments alike have “largely turned a blind eye to the cost of alcohol in Canada,” Sherk wrote.

“The public costs of drinking far outweigh the revenues.”

The so-called “alcohol deficit” — caused by the cost of alcohol’s impact on the health-care and criminal justice systems, by lost productivity, by vehicle collisions, law-enforcement costs — reached an all-time high of $6.4 billion in Canada in 2020 and $1.9 billion in Ontario.

According to the Canadian Alcohol and Drugs Survey, 21 per cent of Canadians who drink alcohol experience some form of alcohol-related harm.

Alcohol is a main cause of disability and premature death. It causes health problems, including liver disease, cardiovascular issues, several types of cancer and mental-health disorders.

A Canadian Substance Use and Harms study found that, in 2020 in Ontario, alcohol had a greater health-system burden and societal cost than any other substance and was the second leading cause of death after tobacco.

A year ago, the Canadian Medical Association Journal proposed mitigation policies at both federal and provincial levels — including strengthening minimum pricing on alcohol, mandating warning labels on all alcoholic beverages and increasing access to screening and treatment for alcohol use disorders.

Last year, a coalition of health, research and advocacy organizations called for a comprehensive provincial alcohol strategy in Ontario.

The odds of it happening are not great, however, in a province run by a premier who the Canadian Public Health Association says “has consistently favoured the interests of alcohol, vaping and convenience store industries over the health and well-being of Ontarians.”

In her 2019 book “Never Enough,” neuroscientist and recovering addict Judith Grisel described alcohol as a “neurological sledgehammer,” acting throughout the brain to hit a multitude of targets, affecting “virtually all aspects of neurological functioning.”

As anyone following news from the courts or the highways recently would be inclined to agree.

Jim Coyle is a former Toronto Star reporter and feature writer. In his 40-year career, he also wrote for The Canadian Press and the Ottawa Citizen.

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/alcohol-is-a-neurological-sledgehammer-that-is-harming-society-in-more-ways-than-we-realize/article_2089079d-b3ac-4ee6-8cab-0bec63331890.html

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