1,446 Years Ago, A ‘Backward, Oppressive’ Religion Born in Arabia Prohibited Alcohol. In 2026, A Canadian Study Stated, “We Agree!”

A recent study conducted in Canada has ranked alcohol as the most harmful drug in the nation, not only for the immense harm it causes users but also for its profoundly negative impact on families, society, law and order, and even the national economy.

Surprising? Not for Muslims. They have known this for 1,400+ years.  

This national study, the first of its kind in Canada, was designed to evaluate drug harms through multi-criteria decision analysis, which considers various forms of harm rather than a single outcome, such as mortality (death).

A panel of 20 experts was tasked with ranking drugs on a scale of 0 to 100 for each form of harm they caused. They then weighed each type’s relative importance to produce a cumulative score.

Alcohol received the highest harm score of 79, followed by tobacco (45), non-prescription opioids (33), cocaine (19), methamphetamine (19), and cannabis (15).

The findings, published in the *Journal of Psychopharmacology* on Tuesday, revealed that alcohol is associated with a wide range of acute and chronic health conditions and plays a significant role in more than 200 disease and injury conditions.

The study also debunked a long-standing claim made by the alcohol lobby: that limited amounts of alcohol are beneficial to health. The results contradicted this notion definitively: whether consumed in small or large quantities, alcohol is detrimental to health.

Alcohol ranked first in nine categories regarding harm, including:

 – Drug-related damage to physical health

– Withdrawal

– Short-term impairment of mental functioning

– Long-term impairment of mental functioning

– Loss of tangible assets

– Loss of relationships

– Injury

– Family and social adversity

– Economic costs

This reinforces a 2023 study from the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction, which estimated that alcohol costs the economy approximately $19.7 billion annually, accounting for about 40% of the total costs associated with substance use.

An example of population-level harm is alcohol’s impact on the healthcare system.

“Our emergency departments often function almost like a clearinghouse for people who are there because they are intoxicated by alcohol,” noted a doctor at one of Toronto’s busy ERs.

Dr. Tim Naimi, a physician, alcohol epidemiologist, and director of the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at the University of Victoria, stated that when tax revenue is subtracted from the cost of each standard drink sold in Ontario, taxpayers pay approximately 30 cents more than the government earns. This discrepancy arises from costs related to health care, lost productivity, criminal justice, and social issues.

Alcohol consumption is not only costly from an economic perspective, contributing to unemployment and absenteeism, but it also drives incidents of intimate partner violence, child neglect, sexual assaults, and more.

These findings contradict Ontario’s recent decision to broaden the availability of alcoholic beverages in convenience stores and corner shops. Researchers view this move as a setback for public health policy because history has shown that increased access leads to higher consumption rates.

But so powerful is the effect of the alcohol lobby on public (health) policy, that Ema Popovic, press secretary to the provincial health minister, Sylvia Jones, ignores everything you have read above and goes on to promise that the province is investing $10 million over five years to ensure alcohol is “sold and consumed safely in the expanded marketplace“. Yes, you got that right. The government’s message is clear: Alcohol is great. It’s the support system that is lacking. But nothing serious. Nothing that a few million dollars wouldn’t fix. Just amazing!

Emma further added, “We have a clear mandate to provide Ontarians with the same choice and convenience that Canadians in every other province have when it comes to buying beer and wine.”

We have no words.

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