Canada

I had the opposite experience. No stress from traffic and work, no want to drink.

"A lot of provinces and territories saw tremendous rollbacks in important safeguards and public policies, particularly around the physical availability of alcohol," he said. People were able to get alcohol delivered directly to their home, or pick it up at a curb.

I forget exactly when alcohol delivery was first allowed, but I do know that a local brewery started their delivery service in 2016 – so no later than that. Just how long does this guy think the pandemic was around for?

Bit of a tangent, but I'd be very curious to see the affect of sales if alcohol had carcinogen warnings plastered all over it like cigarettes do.

I'm sure the older folks wouldn't care much, but I tend to think it might sway the younger folks a bit.

To no one's suprise when the only things allowed open were billionaires little clubs (huge fucking grocery stores which seriously inflated their prices, imo illegally) and LCBO..

I didn't see any numbers in that article that supported the claim. It should be easy to look up alcohol consumption numbers shouldn't it?

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Every social media platform featured pandemic drinking games, tips for cocktails to have with friends over Zoom and alcohol-centred creative content and trends.

Chevrier said she believes this promotion of drinking was meant to lighten people's mental load and thinks content creators outside of the alcohol industry had good intentions.

Lauren MacDonald, an addiction counselor and mental health therapist in Regina, said the amount of calls she got shot up during the pandemic.

Dr. Tim Naimi, a physician and director of the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at the University of Victoria, said even though time will show a fuller picture of the extent of the damage, it's clear that overall alcohol consumption increased during the pandemic.

"A lot of provinces and territories saw tremendous rollbacks in important safeguards and public policies, particularly around the physical availability of alcohol," he said.

In a statement to CBC, the province said it now allows alcohol to be sold for takeout and delivery as part of a food order from a restaurant on a permanent basis.

The original article contains 1,224 words, the summary contains 167 words. Saved 86%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Yes.

Source: https://pxtl.ca/category/cocktails/

(I made 100 different cocktails in a year as my COVID lockdown hobby - yay, alcohol culture!)

Alcohol "culture"