Canadian low-risk drinking guidelines

Addiction Audio

In this episode Dr Merve Mollaametoglu talks to Dr Catherine Paradis director of health promotion and scientific alcohol lead at the Canadian Centre of Substance Use and Addiction, Dr Kevin Shield from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto and Dr Peter Butt clinical associate professor Department of Family Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan.

They discuss their recent article looking at ways of making of low-risk alcohol drinking guidelines. They talk about how difficult it is to reach consensus on low-risk alcohol thresholds and how scientific evidence and public opinion meet. And the development of their ‘risk-zone’ approach. And how this can be interpreted by people who had differing perceptions of risk.

They talk about why people in alcohol focused cultures appear to be willing to accept a higher rate of risk from alcohol than they do from other risk-based activities.

"I would liken the development of the risk-zones the risk curves allowing people to situate themselves to other scientific discoveries….A lot of other public health agencies and a lot of people who have been involved in the development of these guidelines really are taken to the utility of those risk zones and hopefully we’ll see that picked up in a lot more guidelines as well” - Dr Kevin Shield

Original article: New perspectives on how to formulate alcohol drinking guidelines by Kevin Shield and colleagues. Published in Addiction (2023).

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