Selling beer, wine and spirits at convenience stores and gas stations, as Ontario’s “C-store” industry is once again lobbying for seems at first glance to be in the public interest.

LCBO and Beer Store outlets often aren’t easily reached by public transit, a legacy of the post-Prohibition insistence by Queen’s Park that the first several decades’ of liquor outlets be located as far out of sight as possible. And booze outlets still aren’t open 24/7, as your local 7-Eleven and Petro-Canada are.

A non-patronizing regard for drinkers has been the norm in Quebec, Alberta and B.C. long enough for Ontario to seem a throwback. “Treat me like an adult,” says Ontario Tory Leader Tim Hudak in his call for a greater privatization of booze retailing. (Premier Kathleen Wynne opposes less restriction on liquor sales.)

If only it was that straightforward.

Dividends: In its latest fiscal year, the non-profit LCBO cut Ontario taxpayers a cheque for $1.6 billion. The C-store and gas station lobby on alcohol sales has proposed no similar “dividend” to the province. To the extent that Ontario’s 10,000 or so C-stores took business from the LCBO, that would cause a shortfall in revenues for a province already struggling with a massive deficit.

If there was to be a private-sector dividend, there would be no small taxpayer expense in creating a state bureaucracy to enforce remittance collection from thousands of new private liquor vendors. And to ensure that what we used to call “milk stores” were at a minimum distance from schools, recreation centres and other places where young people congregate, and that booze was properly kept from open display, as tobacco products now are.

Sophistication: The C-store industry is highly fragmented. The Ontario branch of its trade association offers training to C-store owners on not selling tobacco to minors. But it has no power to require such training.

Last year, the LCBO’s labs conducted 514,471 tests on product quality. It also challenged 7.8 million prospective customers, most appearing under age and some inebriated, and refused service to 322,000 of them.

A C-store and gas-bar industry that pays mostly rock-bottom wages to minimally trained and often temporary workers does not have the unity or resources to take on such an onerous responsibility any time soon. The LCBO and the Beer Store exist only to sell booze, while your local, harried C-store operator would be busy refilling the Slushie machine and taking inventory of Mississauga street maps when someone pops in for a quick 40-ouncer of Smirnoff.

Addiction: It’s hard to imagine anyone arguing for the wider distribution of tobacco products, the use of which is the largest cause of preventable death. Alcohol is not far behind.

On average, every day in Canada, four Canadians die and 175 people are seriously injured in drinking and driving accidents. A 2009-10 survey cited by the latest position paper of the Canadian Public Health Association shows that roughly 30 per cent of men and 20 per cent of women admit to episodic heavy drinking. (More than five drinks in one session, at least once a month). In 2002, when the population was smaller, there were a reported 641,000 alcoholics in Canada, more people than live in Quebec City.

Ubiquity plays a role. As tobacco products were removed from supermarkets, pharmacies and vending machines, Canadian tobacco use among people aged 15 years and older plunged from 41 per cent in 1966 to a current 19.9 per cent. Rising public awareness of health risks has been a significant factor. But the out-of-sight, out-of-mind impact of restricting tobacco sales has played a huge role.

Currently, booze is sold in 1,289 LCBO and Beer Store outlets. That number would skyrocket by a factor of six if C-stores alone carried booze. A recent survey of 2002-09 data headed by University of Victoria psychology professor Tim Stockwell, director of the Centre for Addictions Research of B.C., found that alcohol-related deaths increase by 2 per cent for every 10 per cent rise in the number of liquor outlets. Availability does drive demand.

Stockwell got to the heart of the matter in telling Star health reporter Theresa Boyle earlier this year that, “People have to consider if their freedom and convenient access to alcohol is worth the price of more alcohol-related deaths and health costs and crime costs.”

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What’s really at issue: The C-store industry is addicted to tobacco, which accounts for about 50 per cent of average convenience store sales. With tobacco use in permanent decline, C-stores and the oil giants are desperate for a replacement source of revenue.

That’s what this issue’s about: The public coming to the rescue of the special pleaders of a peripheral industry, at the expense of urgent efforts to end reckless consumption of so widely abused a substance as alcohol.