Estimation of impacts on premature death, injury and hospitalisation of alternative approaches to federal alcohol taxes

Funding body: Public Health Agency of Canada

Description: Excise taxes can be used as a tool to protect public health and safety. This project uses highly detailed data on prices, alcohol strengths, container sizes and sales volumes for the many thousand alcohol products available for sale in Canada. Using established relationships between price changes and consumption changes, the impact of alternative reforms of excise taxes on government revenues, alcohol use and related harms will be estimated. These reforms will include (i) applying excise taxes at a rate per litre of alcohol for all beverage varieties (ii) increasing excise tax rates with inflation (iii) replacing the GST for alcohol with alcohol volumetric tax (iv) introducing minimum retail prices for a standard drink of alcohol.

Progress to date: completed, report submitted and journal article accepted for publication.