> Windsor’s lifestyle was not only self-destructive and devastating to his family, it was also costly to Canada’s taxpayers. A trip to the hospital cost $243 fo

> Windsor’s lifestyle was not only self-destructive and devastating to his family, it was also costly to Canada’s taxpayers. A trip to the hospital cost $243 for the ambulance, and $250 for a doctor’s assessment. Going to the police station cost $256 for just one officer to talk to him and make notes. Costly to him, costly to society, but profitable for some. Addicts are immensely profitable customers. At least in Ontario with its state-run monopoly stores, some of it goes back to those who pay. But much of the profit goes to producers. Here in Norway we have state monopolies on both alcohol (above a certain %a.c.) and gambling. Control with the profit motive was once cited as a reason for these monopolies, but that has long since fallen by the wayside - now they are run as for-profit corporations, even with the state as owner. A newspaper recently got hold of a leaked memo from the gambling monopoly where they discussed how much they would lose by setting a maximum loss threshold per month. They estimated that a loss limit of 15000 NOK (about 1800 USD) per month would cost them about 400 million NOK per year. That's assuming all those so limited would keep losing the 15000 per month, and it's just the top 1% so of users. The alcohol and gambling industries may talk warmly of responsible use of their products, but truth is that their profits come overwhelmingly from extreme abuse. One customer like Windsor is worth maybe a hundred moderate drinkers. I don't think they're going to give that up willingly - in a sense, they're as addicted as their customers!