No more than three drinks a day for men and no more than two for women.
Those are the maximum amounts of alcohol adults should consume, according to a set of low-risk alcohol drinking guidelines set out Friday by a senior research and policy analyst from the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse.
Speaking to delegates attending the B.C. Council on Substance Abuse conference at Westwood Mennonite Brethren Church, Gerald Thomas outlined a series of statistical measures meant to determine at what point drinkers face higher risks for disease and injury than abstainers.
Turns out a small amount of alcohol helps prevent heart disease thus making drinkers who consume half to one drink per day healthier than those who don't drink at all. But after that, the wriggle room declines quickly based on the full 60 risk factors researchers came up with to determine the number.
And there are some provisos, starting with no more than 15 drinks per week for men and 10 for women.
And non-drinking days should be planned each week to avoid forming a habit and zero is the limit when you're driving a vehicle, taking medicine or other drugs that interact with alcohol or doing any kind of dangerous physical activity.
The same holds true if you have any mental or physical health problems, have alcohol dependence, are pregnant or planning to be pregnant, are responsible for the safety of others or are making important decisions.
On "special occasions" men can consume four drinks and women three, but no more than two or three times a year.
And teens should never have more than one to two drinks at a time and never more than once or twice a week. Indeed, Thomas said that should be the limit until a person's 25th birthday. That's how long it takes for the human brain to be fully and finally developed.
A drink is defined as a 341 ml (12 oz) glass of beer, cider or cooler, a 142 ml (five oz) glass of wine and a 43 ml (1.5 oz) shot of distilled alcohol such as rye, gin or rum.
The numbers show many British Columbians are exceeding those limits. For every person in the province 15 years or older, 8.9 litres of alcohol is purchased each year which adds up to 523 drinks annually.
That amounts to just 1.4 drinks per day, but Thomas also noted that, according to data based self-reporting, about 10 per cent account for 53 per cent of the alcohol sold and that rises to 70 per cent for the top 20 per cent of consumers.
In other words, if everyone stuck to the low-risk guidelines, alcohol sales would decline by 55 per cent, Thomas said. Where alcohol was once used on special and celebratory occasions, Thomas said it's now used recreationally and without moderation.
"That's where we've gone off the rails," he said.
