Dr. Trevor Hancock – Healthy people, healthy communities, a healthy planet

We need a reverence for the Earth and all it contains, an awareness of a connection to nature that is, at its heart, spiritual.

• Published as  ‘We are deeply connected to and kin with all of life’

Dr. Trevor Hancock

11 June 2024

702 words

Two weeks ago, I ended my column on values fit for the 21^st century by stating that we have a set of values that are not fit for purpose today. One of those unfit value sets relates to our relationship with nature, which is rooted in a sense that we are separate from and indeed superior to nature. We believe we can manipulate and manage nature for the benefit of our societies and our economies.

In a very real sense we are indeed separated from nature. In North America we are 80 percent urbanised and we spend 90 percent of our time indoors – and a further 5 percent in cars and other vehicles. So we – and especially our children – have very little contact with nature, and most of that is a constrained form of nature in an urban setting.

Moreover, in economic terms we discount nature. A forest has no economic value until it is cut down and turned into lumber or paper. The pollution of air, water and land, especially well away from us, is considered an externality, not factored into our economic models and measures, “for no better reason”, wrote the late Herman Daly, a leading proponent of an economics of wellbeing, “than because we have made no provision for them in our economic models.” 


But this set of values is incompatible with our survival. So the first of four sets of value transformations I propose is the need to (re)establish a sense of reverence for the Earth and all it contains, an awareness of a connection to nature that is both rooted in ecological reality and is, at its heart, spiritual.

Duwamish Chief Seattle reportedly said almost two centuries ago, “we are part of the great web of life, and whatever we do to the web of life, we do to ourselves”. We need to recognize that simple fact and acknowledge that ecosystems and the species they contain have intrinsic worth, that nature has rights, that other species have rights, and we owe them justice.

All of this has enormous resonance with long-held Indigenous world views and traditional teachings. I was powerfully struck by this point from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report in 2015:

“Reconciliation between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians, from an Aboriginal perspective, also requires reconciliation with the natural world. If human beings resolve problems between themselves but continue to destroy the natural world, then reconciliation remains incomplete.

This is a perspective that we as Commissioners have repeatedly heard: that reconciliation will never occur unless we are also reconciled with the earth.”

I am also moved by the oft-heard concept among Indigenous people of ‘all our relations’ – that we are deeply connected to and kin with all of life – something modern DNA studies show to be true to a remarkable degree.

Now I am not Indigenous, but I am a member of a Global Working Group of the International Union of Health Promotion and Education (IUHPE) that is Indigenous-led and focused on what Indigenous perspectives and spirituality bring to our understanding of planetary health – the health of human civilizations and the natural systems that support them.

We just authored for IUHPE a Position Statement on Planetary Health Promotion and Indigenous World Views and Knowledges. In it we stated:

“Viewing humanity as deeply connected with the environment is a central element of Indigenous knowledge systems. This interdependence is not a romanticized version of the environment, but one that is perceived through a worldview that our health is tied to the health of the planet. We cannot separate human and ecosystem wellbeing in this interconnected paradigm.”

We also explicitly connected Indigenous world views and knowledges with spiritual approaches:

“Spirituality is another facet of human life that offers pathways to re-engage with humanity’s deep connection with the natural world, and to foster environmental awareness, activism and wellbeing in ways that can enhance both health promotion and planetary health.”

Whether we approach the issue of a reverence for nature through ecological science, Indigenous values or spirituality does not matter. The point is to see ourselves in context, and with humility, as just one small part of the global ecosystem that sustains us, and all of life.

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

•  Published as ‘Morris dancing is good for sinners and non-sinners alike’

Benefits include being physically active, with good balance, agility and strength, as well as the mental health benefits of having to create, learn and remember dances

Dr. Trevor Hancock

4 June 2024                                                             

701 words

I am a Morris dancer, which means – in the eyes of the 17^th century Puritan polemicist William Prynne – that I am a sinner, bound for Hell. His blast against dancing, in his 1632 book Histriomastix is so wonderful it bears repeating here.

“Dancing, is, for the most part, attended with many amorous smiles, wanton compliments, unchaste kisses, scurrilous songs and sonnets, effeminate music, lust provoking attire, ridiculous love pranks, all which savor only of sensuality, of raging fleshly lusts. Therefore, it is wholly to be abandoned of all good Christians.

Dancing serves no necessary use, no profitable, laudable, or pious end at all. It is only from the inbred pravity, vanity, wantonness, incontinency, pride, profaneness, or madness of man’s depraved nature. Therefore, it must needs be unlawful unto Christians.

The way to heaven is too steep, too narrow for men to dance in and keep revel rout. No way is large or smooth enough for capering roisters, for jumping, skipping, dancing dames but that broad, beaten, pleasant road that leads to HELL. The gate of heaven is too narrow for whole rounds, whole troops of dancers to march in together.”

Guilty as charged – well, except I don’t think anyone would describe me or my attire as lust-provoking! And he didn’t even mention going to the pub afterwards!

I tell you this to warn those of you of a sensitive nature to avoid the front steps of the BC Legislature on Saturday June 15^th at about 4 PM. For those who are more bold, if you show up there, you will have a chance to see Canada’s oldest Morris side celebrating its 50^th anniversary, along with the other two local Morris sides. (You have another chance, when we are joined by Sound and Fury Morris from Seattle on July 6^th at 4 PM at the Legislature.)

Morris dancing is a traditional English folk dance, and is first mentioned in 1448 in a record of payment to some Morris dancers. Today it is danced all over the world. Indeed, Morris dancers around the world get up to dance at dawn on May Day – May 1^st – because if we don’t, the sun will not rise. Yes, you can thank us when you see us!

Hollytree Morris was established by David and Christine Winn in 1974; they had already co-founded the Saanich International Folk Dancers Association a few years earlier, having arrived here in 1969. Interested in their own English cultural traditions, they were inspired to create Hollytree Morris, who first performed in Victoria (originally as the Victoria Morris Men) in 1974. Since then, Hollytree Morris has danced at countless festivals and events throughout the region, across Canada and as far afield as the USA and England.

David, sadly, died in 2014, but Christine is still dancing, and dancing well, at 83, and we have dancers and musicians – yes, we are blessed with live music too – in their 80s, while many of us – including me – are in our 70s. So when I say Hollytree is the oldest Morris side in Canada, I mean that in both ways – longest established, and probably oldest average age.

I have not been dancing quite that long, but I started Morris dancing with Green Fiddle Morris in Toronto in the late 1970s, and have enjoyed the benefits of Morris dancing ever since. Those benefits include being physically active, with good balance, agility and strength, as well as the mental health benefits of having to create, learn and remember dances. Beyond that, there are also the social benefits of being with a group of friends every week.

On top of that, as a City of Victoria Proclamation for Folktoria (held last week, June 1^st and 2^nd) and Hollytree’s Golden Jubilee notes, “an important purpose of international folk dance is to learn dances from other countries and traditions, and in doing so to learn about and celebrate them: and this celebration of many cultures is shared with the community through public performance, bringing pleasure to hundreds of dancers and thousands of audience members over the years.”

So if you don’t mind hanging out with a bunch of sinners, join us as we celebrate on June 15^th or July 6th.

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

• Published as “Ecosystems sustain societies that create economies”

It’s is a simple prescription, but in practice, we try to make it work the other way around

Dr. Trevor Hancock

27 May 2024

701 words

Last week I suggested that the bad decisions that government and corporate leaders are making, in the face of growing evidence of ecological decline and potential collapse, are rooted in a set of societal values that are unfit for purpose in the 21^st century.

Back in April I was asked to be the homilist at the First Unitarian Church just before Earth Day and to talk about the values revolution that is needed. Now I don’t know about you, but I didn’t even know there was such a a beast as a homilist, and only a vague sense of what a homily is. So I looked it up. A homily, I found, is “a commentary that follows a reading of scripture, giving the ‘public explanation of a sacred doctrine’ or text.”

Clearly I needed a piece of scripture on which to base my homily. But not being a theist, I had no sacred text to turn to. So I looked to a piece of wisdom that might be considered scripture – a word that means “sacred writings”; it certainly is scripture for me: “Ecosystems sustain societies that create economies. It does not work the other way around.”

The source is the 2014 edition of the bi-annual Living Planet report from the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF). This simple piece of scripture contains a great deal of wisdom that is relevant to our modern conundrum, and underscores the need for a values revolution.

Indeed, it is a simple but profound prescription for how we should organise our societies, communities and economies. But in practice, driven by a set of distorted values, we try to make it work the other way around. As a result we live in a world where economies shape and distort societies that then damage or destroy ecosystems – to the detriment not only of our health and wellbeing, but that of a myriad other species with whom we share this one small planet.

There are four elements in the WWF ‘scripture’ that I want to explore with respect to the values we currently exhibit and how they need to change. They are the three realms of the Earth (ecosystems), society and the economy, and how we prioritise among them.

These three realms are congruent with what the Great Transition Initiative calls “the conventional triad of individualism, consumerism, and domination of nature” that lies at the root of our current global and local crises.

The Great Transition Initiative is focused on a deep transformation of culture and society and proposes that in opposition to the conventional – and mis-aligned – triad of values noted above – individualism, consumerism, and domination of nature –  we need to develop “a constellation of values – human solidarity, quality of life, and ecological sensibility” that will get us to the future we need.

Let’s start with the realm of the Earth and its ecosystems. As the WWF makes clear, ecosystems – and more broadly, the Earth – contains everything else. Every human we know of, except for the 10 currently on the International Space Station, lives on Earth – all  8+ billion of us. Every human there has ever been, and every member of every species there is or has ever been, lives or lived on Earth.

This one tiny blue dot contains all the life of the universe, as far as we know at present, and it is the basis of our very existence.

So you would think we would treat the Earth with great reverence, respect and care. But we know we don’t. Ever seen a clearcut? A polluted river? A burned forest? A destoyed reef? A tarsands mine? A tailings pond? An oceanic plastics gyre? Cities and the lands that surround them covered in air pollution?

We are in deep, deep trouble. We have already crossed six of nine planetary boundaries and are approaching two of the remaining three. In the process we have triggered a sixth ‘Great Extinction’.

All this stems from an unfit set of values rooted in a mistaken belief that we are separate from and indeed superior to nature, and can manipulate and manage nature for the benefit of our societies and our economies. I will discuss this further over the coming weeks.

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

The Lalonde Report, tabled in Parliament on May 1, 1974, was the first significant government report to suggest that health-care services were not the most important determinant of health

Dr. Trevor Hancock

30 April 2024

705 words

As I look back on my life, I seem to have had the happy knack of being in the right place at the right time. At the age of seventeen I heard about Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO), the British forerunner of the Peace Corps and CUSO, and before my 18^th birthday was a volunteer teacher in Lundu, Sarawak, in the northern part of Borneo. It was an experience that changed my life in ways I did not fully realise for decades; it certainly shaped my decision to work in public health.

Another example of this happy knack was to arrive in Canada in January 1975 – to practise family medicine in New Brunswick – and almost immediately come across “A New Perspective on the Health of Canadians”, otherwise known as the Lalonde Report. I still have my original copy of the report, along with my excited and enthusiastic marginal notes.

Named for the then federal Minister of Health and Welfare, the late Marc Lalonde, it was tabled in Parliament on May 1^st 1974. Of course, while it came out with his blessing and support, he was not the author; that honour belongs largely to Bert Laframboise and Huguette Labelle, two federal public servants at the Long-range Health Planning Branch – yes, we had something that useful back then, but sadly, not now.

Nonetheless, Mr. Lalonde clearly was fully engaged with the report that bears his name. He presented it at the World Health Assembly in Geneva in June 1973, at a meeting of the Pan-American Health Organization in Ottawa in September 1973 and at a meeting of the Federal and Provincial Ministers of Health in February 1974.  It was apparently well received at all of these meetings, and importantly the conceptual approach was adopted by the provincial ministers of health.

So what was so important about the Lalonde Report, and how did it change my life? Put simply, it was the first significant government report to suggest that health care services were not the most important determinant of health. Now at a time of crisis in access to health care that may seem odd, but by and large medical care – with the notable exception of clinical prevention in primary care and public health in general – is not focused on keeping people healthy. Instead, the health care system is almost entirely focused on diagnosing, treating and managing disease and injury, restoring people’s health where possible.

The central point of the Lalonde Report was the concept of ‘health fields’ and the report proposed four fields: lifestyle, environment, health care organization and human biology. It pointed out that while “in most minds the health field and the personal medical care system are synonymous”, the historical evidence, coupled with an analysis of mortality and morbidity left “no doubt that the traditional view of equating the level of health in Canada with the availability of physicians and hospitals is inadequate.”

“There is little doubt”, the report stated, “that future improvements in the level of health of Canadians lie mainly in improving the environment, moderating self-imposed risks and adding to our knowledge of human biology.” And  in a speech to the Canadian Public Health Association later that year, Lalonde said “The approach we have outlined, I believe, offers great potential for the prevention of disease and the promotion of health on a much broader scale than has been previously considered.” 

That and other insights from the report led me a few short years later to shift my focus from diagnosing, treating  and managing disease to working to prevent disease and injury in the first place, protecting people from harm and improve the health and wellbeing of the population.

Within a few years I found myself – that happy knack again – working for the City of Toronto’s Health Advocacy Unit.  And that in turn led me to help develop and spread globally the concept of healthy cities and communities – a concept, I realised nearly 30 years ago, had its roots in my experience in Lundu.

So this week I celebrate the Lalonde Report and honour its authors and the Minister who made it possible – and in the process, changed my life.

**********************

I am on vacation the next couple of weeks, so no columns until late May.

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggest plastic additive chemicals are present in the bodies of nearly all Americans

Dr. Trevor Hancock

23 April 2024

700 words

Last week I looked at the scale of the plastics industry and its environmental impact. This week, I examine its direct impact on human health, the harmful attitude of the industry and the hopes for national and global action.  

A team led by Professor Martin Wagner of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology recently reported that of 16,000 chemicals associated with plastic, at least 4,200 “are of concernbecause of their high hazards to human health and the environment.”

The health impacts were summarised in a commentary last month in the New England Journal of Medicine by Dr. Philip Landrigan, a distinguished American pediatrician who chaired the 2017 Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health. He noted: ”Data from the National Biomonitoring Surveys of the [US] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggest that plastic additive chemicals are present in the bodies of nearly all Americans.”

Depending on the chemical additive, their toxic effects may include causing cancer, damage to the nervous system, disruption of the endocrine (hormone) system and of lipid metabolism, which in turn can “increase the risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and stroke.”

Their potential to disrupt hormones – and of course, this is not just in humans but in many other species – is of particular concern.  A May 2023 UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report noted “women and children are particularly susceptible” and that these chemicals “can have severe or long-lasting adverse effects”, including neuro-developmental problems in children and fertility problems in both women and men.

Moreover, their impacts can cross the generations. In a release from the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE) on Earth Day, Dr. Lyndia Dernis, an anesthesiologist in Québec, wrote: “when I administer an intravenous to a pregnant woman, I have to live with the knowledge that I may be exposing three generations to the endocrine disrupting phthalates in that plastic IV: the pregnant mom, her future baby girl, and the babies of that baby to be. Yet the phthalates that continue to be used in Canada have been banned in France since 2012.” 

Just as worrying as the widespread presence of these chemicals in our bodies is that plastic nano-particles are everywhere, throughout the food chain. Two recent articles in the medical literature have reported them in every placenta examined and in arteries, including coronary arteries. As one researcher stated in The Guardian, “If we are seeing effects on placentas, then all mammalian life on this planet could be impacted. That’s not good.”

But as we have seen time and again, just like other industries – such as the tobacco industry – that are focused on their own commercial interests, the plastics industry fights regulations intended to limit harm to health and the environment.

In November 2023, for example, a case brought by an industry coalition and several chemical companies that manufacture plastics overturned the federal government’s attempt to ban single-use plastics such as plastic bags, cutlery, take-out containers and straws. In the USA meanwhile, the Guardian reported last month, after a four-year legal fight “A federal appeals court in the US has killed a ban on plastic containers contaminated with highly toxic PFAS ‘forever chemicals’ found to leach at alarming levels into food, cosmetics, household cleaners, pesticides and other products across the economy.”

In addition, a recent report from the Center for Climate Integrity, a US non-profit that is committed to holding oil and gas corporations accountable for the massive costs of climate change, finds that plastics recycling is largely a fraud. “Petrochemical companies”, the report bluntly states, “have engaged in fraudulent marketing and public education campaigns designed to mislead the public about the viability of plastic recycling as a solution to plastic waste.”

Small wonder, then that the UNEP suggests that among the actions governments should take are to “eliminate the plastic products we do not need, through bans for example”, as well as recommending other steps to reduce plastics and plastic waste through re-use and recycling.

We all need to support the position of CAPE and “call on the federal government to limit plastics production, eliminate toxic additives, and protect the health of those most at risk – and advocate for this in a strong global treaty.”

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

• Published as “Our addiction to plastics will come back to haunt us”

Plastics contain some very toxic chemicals and break down into nano-particles that end up in our bodies.

Dr. Trevor Hancock

16  April 2024

696 words

Tomorrow, April 22^nd, is Earth Day, and the theme this year is ‘Planet vs. Plastics’. This is timely, because Tuesday 23^rd April marks the start of a week-long session in Ottawa of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution. So this week I begin to look at the plastics industry as yet another example of an industry that harms people and planet in pursuit of profit.

Set up by the UN Environment Assembly, the Committee’s task is “to develop an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment.” This is intended to take “a comprehensive approach that addresses the full life cycle of plastic, including its production, design, and disposal” and should be ready by the end of this year. It can’t come too soon.

According to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), on its ‘Our planet is choking on plastic’ website, the world produces an estimated 400 million tonnes of plastic waste every year. This will grow to 1 billion tonnes by 2052 if we carry on as we are. Since the 1970s, adds UNEP, “plastic production has grown faster than that of any other material.” For example, an astounding one million plastic bottles are purchased every minute worldwide – yes, that is every minute! – and up to five trillion – yes, trillion, which is one thousand billion! – plastic bags are used each year, UNEP states.

Making and distributing all that plastic, takes a lot of fossil fuel – “98 percent of single-use plastic products are produced from fossil fuel”, notes the UNEP – and a lot of energy. “The level of greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production, use and disposal of conventional fossil fuel-based plastics is forecast to grow to 19 per cent of the global carbon budget by 2040”, UNEP states.

All that plastic has to go somewhere, but not much is recycled; less than 10 percent according to the UNEP. About half goes into landfills, while just under 20 percent is incinerated (which if done poorly can create some very toxic chemicals, such as dioxins and furans – potent cancer-causing and foetus-damaging chemicals).

Almost a quarter is mismanaged: ‘Mismanaged means, in practice, “materials burned in open pits, dumped into seas or open waters, or disposed of in unsanitary landfills and dumpsites”, notes Our World in Data.

As a result, a lot of it ends up in our oceans. The UNEP estimates that 75 to 199 million tons of plastic are currently in our oceans. As of 2016, we were adding about 9-14 million tonnes per year, but the UNEP estimates this could double or triple to 23-37 million tonnes per year by 2040.

The problem with plastic, the UNEP notes, is that it is very durable and resistant to degradation, which makes plastic “nearly impossible for nature to completely break down.” So it floats around, ends up on beaches or sinks to the bottom, and in all of those settings, it can be mistaken for food and eaten by marine life and birds, or in the case of large nets, can ensnare fish or drown birds, turtles and air-breathing mammals.

But all that plastic does not stay floating around in large pieces. Instead, it is broken down into tiny nano-particles, which then enter the food chain. An April 7^th article in this newspaper reported that “earlier this year, UBC and Ocean Wise scientists found that plastics can harm or even kill zooplankton, reducing a food source for many types of fish, including salmon.”

Its bad enough that plastics add considerably to global heating and are a threat to marine life. But just as with persistent chemicals, which I discussed last week, our plastics will come back to haunt us in other ways. They contain, can give rise to or absorb some very toxic chemicals and, we now know, they breakdown into nano-particles that end up in our bodies. The combination of toxic chemicals and nano-particles takes us into very uncharted waters in terms of health impacts.

Next week I will look in more depth at the health implications of plastics, at the way the industry has covered up these problems, and how governments and the international community need to respond.

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

• Published as “We still have no idea of the health effects of many pollutants

The chemical industry is subjecting us — and all the other species with whom we share this planet — to an uncontrolled experiment to which we never consented

Dr. Trevor Hancock

9 April 2024

698 words

Almost 45 years ago I co-led a report titled ‘Our Chemical Society’ for the City of Toronto’s Department of Public Health, for whom I then worked. It makes for instructive reading, because the industry we were focused on seems to have changed little in the intervening decades in terms of its appraoch, although it has grown even larger.

In 1981 we wrote: “The chemical industry is a large and powerful sector of our society, and is committed to expanding the use of chemicals. Indeed, many chemicals used in many varied ways have been beneficial to us all. However, the extent to which chemicals have penetrated ourselves and the environment of which we are a part is a matter for serious concern.”

At that time, it was estimated, there were 60,000 – 100,000 chemicals in commercial use, with 1,000 new chemicals introduced annually. Of these, 34,000 chemicals were on the US EPA’s 1978 Toxic Effects List and there were 1,400 pesticides used in North America.

Today, in spite of decades of scientific and public concern, the situation is, if anything, worse. The chemical industry, noted the authors of a recent study in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, “is the second largest manufacturing industry globally. Global production increased 50-fold since 1950, and is projected to triple again by 2050 compared to 2010.” There are now estimated to be “350,000 chemicals (or mixtures of chemicals) on the global market”, of which “nearly 70,000 have been registered in the past decade.”

The study assessed whether we have passed the planetary boundary for ‘novel entities’. These are “new substances, new forms of existing substances and modified life forms”, things of which nature – including we humans – has no experience and not much adaptive capacity.

Novel entities include not only chemicals but “new types of engineered materials or organisms not previously known to the Earth system” (think nano-particles of plastic and GMOs) and heavy metals that we have mined and mobilized into the environment. 

But many of these chemicals remain inadequately tested. The article on novel entities gave an example:  Of more than 12,000 chemicals registered  for review in a European Union program, only 20 percent had been assessed after 10 years of operation of the program. And that is in a rich and well-managed region; they also reported that nearly 30,000 new chemical products “have only been registered in emerging economies, where chemical production has increased rapidly, but chemicals management and disposal capacity often are limited.”

In our 1981 report we expressed concern in particular about the problem of ecotoxicity: the dispersal of harmful pollutants throughout the environment (see my December 3^rd 2023 column). Many of those are persistent organic pollutants (POPs) that accumulate and are bio-magnified up the food chain – and guess who sits at the top of these food chains: Us, orca, raptors and other predators. As a result, we and they are born with and over time further accumulate a body burden of a mixture of POPs, the health effects of which are largely unknown, especially as a mix of many different chemicals.

Because of inadequate testing and population health monitoring and research, a Commission on Pollution and Health, established by The Lancet, suggested in 2017, that there are large categories of pollutants for which we lack knowledge of their actual health impacts. As a result, “the health effects of pollution that are currently recognised and quantified could thus be the tip of a much larger iceberg.”

Unsurprisingly, then, the assessment of the planetary boundary for novel entities found “the planetary boundary . . . is exceeded since annual production and releases are increasing at a pace that outstrips the global capacity for assessment and monitoring.”

In effect, the chemical industry is subjecting us – and all the other species with whom we share this planet – to an uncontrolled experiment to which we never consented, and of which we were not adequately informed – in fact, deliberately kept in the dark by so-called ‘trade secrets’. Forty-five years later, the chemical industry continues to fight tooth and nail to protect its profits and avoid stronger regulation, regardless of the toll on people and the myriad other species with which we share the planet.

© Trevor Hancock, 2023

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

• Published as  “Gambling industry needs stronger regulation to protect public health.”

Gambling opportunities continue to expand in spite of evidence of harms from mental-health effects to financial problems

Dr. Trevor Hancock

2 April 2024

702 words

The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto just released a report on another industry that in various ways harms health – gambling.  Not only can it be addictive and harmful to health and social wellbeing, its impact is disproportionately experienced by low-income people, which makes it unjust.

Statistics Canada reported in 2022 that in 2018 (troublingly, the last year for which there is national data, it seems), almost 70 percent of Canadian adults gambled. Half of all adults bought lottery or raffle tickets, one-third bought instant lottery tickets or online games, one in eight used video lottery terminals, while one in 12 of us bet at casino tables or on sports.  

However, the StatsCan report noted, “1.6 percent of past-year gamblers were at a moderate-to-severe risk of problems related to gambling”. This equates to more than 300,000 people, but the CAMH report notes that “for every person experiencing gambling problems, another 5 to 10 people are negatively affected, with harms to mental health and financial security especially common.” So problem gambling actually affects 1.5 to 3 million Canadians.  

Problem gambling is classed as an addictive disorder.  The risks problem gamblers face include “depression and suicide, bankruptcy, family breakup, domestic abuse, assault, fraud, theft, and even homelessness”, according to the Canadian Safety Council. The CAMH study reports that “people with gambling disorder had 15 times the suicide mortality of the general population.”

While a smaller proportion of low-income people gambled, compared to high income people, they were more than twice as likely to be at risk. And worryingly, the CAMH study reported that while 1.2 percent of adults in Ontario are experiencing or are at risk for gambling problems, the rate is almost 50 percent higher in high-school students.

But gambling is also immensely profitable, both to the gambling industry and to governments that both operate and tax gambling. So it is not surprising that “gambling opportunities have been increasing globally” and that is true in Canada too; sports gambling was legalised in 2021 and in addition the provinces have expanded legal online gambling. This expansion is occurring, notes the CAMH report, in spite of evidence that “In general as gambling opportunities increase, gambling-related harms tend to increase.”

However, as a source of government revenue, gambling is unjust: First, only two-thirds of us play and pay, and second, it is a regressive form of taxation. Low-income people who gamble spend proportionately more of their annual income on gambling than do higher-income people. As the CAMH report notes, “to the extent that gambling policy fails to prevent (or even facilitates) harm, gambling policy can exacerbate health inequity.”

The CAMH report comes at the same time as a growing concern with sports gambling, especially among young people, and with the amount of advertising for gambling. The CAMH report is clear on the role of advertising: “The purpose of advertising is to drive consumption, and gambling is no exception”, their report states, adding that “there is a causal relationship between exposure to gambling advertising and . . . actual gambling activity.”

Moreover, CAMH notes, “Children and youth, as well as those already experiencing gambling problems, are especially susceptible to these effects.” Unfortunately, CAMH adds, “There do not appear to be rules or guidelines in Canada governing the volume of gambling ads”.

Bruce Kidd, a former Olympian and a professor emeritus of sports policy at the University of Toronto, is chair of a Campaign to Ban Ads for Gambling. Interviewed on CBC Radio’s ‘On the Coast’ on March 27^th, he stated: “Since the legalisation of sports betting in Canada there has been a tsunami of ads and it’s clear they have encouraged more and more children and youth and other vulnerable people to bet, and to bet well beyond their means, and to create very difficult situations.”

The campaign’s ‘White Paper’ (available at BanAdsForGambling.ca)is clear; it “calls for the prohibition of ads for gambling in the same way that ads for tobacco and cannabis have been restricted.” This should be part of a broader approach recommended by the CAMH report, to take a public health approach to gambling by focusing on stronger regulation of the industry, rather than just encouraging gamblers to be responsible.  

© Trevor Hancock, 2023

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

Getting people to want and purchase more has adverse effects on both people and the planet

Dr. Trevor Hancock

26 March 2024

701 words

Last week I looked at one of the underpinnings of our economic system, the financial sector. This week I turn to another key sector that is often overlooked – the advertising industry. It is a huge industry. Forbes magazine recently reported that Magna, a major media and communications company, expects the global ad spend in 2024 “to increase by 7.2 percent, totalling $914 billion”, with over two-thirds of that being spent on digital media.  

Almost all of that nearly $1 trillion expenditure – equal to about 40 percent of the entire global auto manufacturing industry – is focused on encouraging and celebrating consumption, and getting people to want and purchase more. But this has adverse effects on both people and the planet.

Clearly people are harmed directly when advertising encourages the consumption  – or over-consumption – of health damaging products such as tobacco, unhealthy foods, alcohol, breast milk substitutes, gambling or a host of other products. But what I think we need to focus on is the harmful effects of advertising in general, regardless of the product being marketed.

Almost 2,500 years ago the Greek philosopher Epicurus wrote: “Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not”, a sentiment echoed by the 19^th century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: “Happiness is continuing to desire what you already possess.” Or as Amercian singer and actor RuPaul put it, very simply, “happiness is wanting what you already have.”

But commercial advertising, of course, is about the very opposite of this. It is about persuading you that happiness is about possessing what you don’t have, to want more of something you already have, or to envy the experiences that others are having. It fosters not just envy and greed, but anxiety about lacking what you don’t have; ask the parents of any child who feels left out and looked down upon if they don’t have the latest gadget or sneakers or whatever.

In a pamphlet on the impacts of advertising on mental health, Adfree Cities – a UK-based campaign to end all corporate outdoor advertising – notes: “Advertising often presents us with an unrealistic picture of happiness, often tied to notions of glamour, money, power and possessions. As we struggle to live up to this we can feel that we’ve failed no matter how much we spend.” In the end, then, advertising creates unhappiness.

A 2020 article in the Harvard Business Review highlighted the work of a European research team that looked at the relationship between advertising and the happiness of nations. The researchers looked at roughly I million people surveyed over 30 years across 27 European nations. They found “that increases in national advertising expenditure are followed by significant declines in levels of life satisfaction.”

One of the team, Andrew Oswald, Professor of Economics and Behavioural Science at the University of Warwick, noted: “if you doubled advertising spending, it would result in a 3 percent drop in life satisfaction.” That may not seem very much, but it is “about half the drop in life satisfaction you’d see in a person who had gotten divorced or about one-third the drop you’d see in someone who’d become unemployed”, meaning “advertising has sizable consequences.”

In addition to effects on our personal wellbeing, advertising also impacts planetary health by encouraging more and more consumption of just about everything. Consumption is at the root of our global ecological crisis; more ‘stuff’ extracted for a growing population with growing demands from an increasingly damaged and over-exploited environment spells trouble. So urging people to want more stuff – super-sized meals, more energy, larger cars, more trinkets, more everything – is going to increase the harm we do to the Earth and thus to ourselves.

‘Badvertising’ is a campaign  in the UK committed to stopping adverts and sponsorships fuelling the climate emergency. They point out: “We ended tobacco advertising when we understood the harm done by smoking. Now we know the damage done by fossil fuel products and activities, it’s time to stop promoting them.”

I agree. But I would suggest we expand this idea even further, to target all advertising that encourages activities that harm the Earth and damage our health. The last thing we need is encouragement to lead more unhappy, unhealthy and planet-damaging lives.

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy