Is it just me, or does anyone else see the irony in the P.E.I. Liquor Commission advertising “new and improved” alcohol products in both print and now radio ads?
Perhaps you didn’t receive the cute booklet showing the fun people could have if they consumed “coolers”?
When I contacted the P.E.I. Liquor Commission I was told that “other provinces were doing this” and that the alcohol producers were paying all the costs for the booklet.
However, on digging a little deeper I was told that the actual production was “in house” – in other words, P.E.I. civil servants were responsible for designing and distributing these advertisements.
So, we are using taxpayer dollars to advertise alcohol in the province where, according to Statistics Canada, the number of impaired drivers went up 47 per cent in 2018.
Again, according to the July 22 report, it’s the highest percentage increase across Canada, with no other province breaking into double digits.
Using government of P.E.I. figures for 2019, repeat impaired offenders, divided into categories, were first repeat (67.5 per cent) second repeat (21 per cent) and third or more times repeat impaired offenders (11.5 per cent) of DUIs.
This is a blatant encouragement of addiction in our province, where drinking and driving is such a problem.
It is no secret that police forces are spread thinly across the province, so these figures are just the tip of the iceberg of the actual number of drunken drivers, each one driving a weapon that can maim and kill.
To show how pervasive the Liquor Commission’s thoughts are about promoting themselves if one looks at both U.P.E.I. and Holland College team buses one can see that they carry the P.E.I.
Liquor Commission Logos on them.
Go Islanders?
Gary Walker,
Charlottetown
