How many alcoholic drinks do you have in a week? That question was posed to Canadians in a survey and most of them said they had no drinks at all, a new Statistics Canada report shows.
In 2023, more than three-quarters (77 per cent) of adults living in Canada’s provinces reported drinking at least one alcoholic beverage in the past 12 months. To better understand regular drinking behaviour, the 2023 Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) asked about alcohol use in the past seven days.
Over half (54 per cent) of people aged 18 and over reported not drinking any alcohol at all during the past week, while 15 per cent reported drinking only one to two drinks in the seven days. The survey said 15 per cent of respondents said they had between three and six drinks and another 15 per cent had seven drinks or more in the last seven days.
While the findings are similar to findings in 2015-2016, when 53 per cent respondents said they had not had any alcohol in the last week, the 2023 data comes after years of the COVID-19 pandemic that saw increases in drinking among many Canadians.
However, the numbers look different for men and women.
Nearly twice as many men (20 per cent) as women (11 per cent) said they had seven or more drinks in a week, which is the level of alcohol consumption linked to the highest risk of alcohol-related harms.
The number of men and women having three to six drinks a week (16 per cent for men, 15 per cent for women) was roughly the same, as was the number of men and women drinking one to two drinks in a week (15 per cent for men and 16 per cent for women).
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Women had a higher rate of abstinence, with 59 per cent saying they had no alcohol in the week, compared with 49 per cent of men.
The survey also shows that younger people are drinking less than other age groups. The report said 67 per cent of people between the ages of 18 and 22 said they drank no alcohol, compared with all other age groups, for which the proportion ranged between 51 and 57 per cent.
A lower proportion of those aged 18 to 22 reported drinking seven or more alcoholic drinks in the past seven days (eight per cent) compared with those in the other age groups, where proportions ranged from 14 per cent to 17 per cent.
Quebec had the highest proportion (18 per cent) of people who said they’d had seven or more drinks in the past week, compared with the national average of 15 per cent.
Quebec also had a lower proportion (47 per cent) of people who said they had not had any drinks in the last week.
The proportion of people who had seven or more drinks was also higher in rural areas (19 per cent), compared with people living in urban areas (14 per cent). People in urban areas had a higher proportion of people (56 per cent) who had no drinks in the week, compared with 59 per cent for rural areas.
While the report did not go into causes, it linked higher salaries to higher alcohol consumption. The report said twice as many people in the highest income household bracket (22 per cent) drank seven or more drinks in the week compared with lowest income households (11 per cent).
Among those in the lowest household income bracket, 67 per cent reported not drinking any alcohol in the past seven days, which was higher than those in the highest income quintile, where 41 per cent reported not drinking any alcohol.
People working in the trades (23 per cent) and people working in the arts (22 per cent) reported drinking seven or more drinks at higher levels than the national average.
A Statistics Canada report in March showed that Canadians are skipping alcohol in favour of cannabis.
Recreational cannabis sales by provincial authorities increased by 15.8 per cent year over year. Canadians spent a total of $4.7 billion in the 2022-23 fiscal year, according to Statistics Canada, which is a $0.6-billion jump from the previous year.
A Statistics Canada breakdown says that works out to every Canadian of legal age spending $150 per year on the products, a number that has been steadily increasing since recreational cannabis was legalized in 2018.
Meanwhile, the volume of alcohol sales has declined for the second consecutive year. According to Statistics Canada, alcohol sales based on volume fell by 1.1 per cent, or 3,106 million litres, in 2022-23.