“I don’t want to say that there are necessarily equivalent health risks,”

I mean, they said it themselves. Drinking responsibly and in moderation poses no recorded long-term health risks. But even 1 cigarette a day can cause serious harm.

I always thought the hypocrisy between alcohol and cannabis packaging is ridiculous. If cigarettes and cannabis need to be heavily restricted in terms of having simple, plain packaging with health warnings, anything for sale that can cause health issues should be subject to the same restrictions.

Warnings now do appear on the back of alcohol in the EU but they're usually small things on the back of the label stating the units of alcohol in the bottle & warning about drinking while pregnant or whatever.

Don't forget sugar too!

The answer is in the article: “ I don’t want to say that there are necessarily equivalent health risks,”

Because the alcohol industry is still profitable enough for special treatment.

Alcohol is a massive tax revenue in pretty much everywhere in the world, but especially here in Canada. It's pretty obvious when you see the difference in price of a beer here compared to the states, as 90% of that difference is purely taxes. Hell, you can tell the difference between the beer/wine costs in Ontario vs in Quebec. There's a reason why people in Ottawa and Gatineau constantly cross the boarder to buy their poison of choice.

That said, there's also the fact that when the States tried to ban it, they basically created some of the richest criminals in the world in like a single year. Alcohol is so ingrained into modern society that people riot over it.

Tobacco is a comfort luxury that pretty much anybody can get off of with some effort. Alcohol is a crutch that far too many people use to avoid going to some pretty dark places.

@NightOwl a it's so normalized in our society that people are afraid to acknowledge the dangers.

Because those health warnings are meaningless to begin with. We know it's bad for us, we don't need a nanny state to hold our hands at the same time.

No one recreationally smokes the same way that people might drink every once in a while.

You also have a lot of money spent by various alcohol manufacturers to keep alcohol from being treated like tobacco. If anything, drinking went up a lot with millennials.