Canada’s boycott of American alcohol is working!

I propose scaling this up significantly and expanding it to other countries and also include pop (ex: coca-cola) and tobacco for the boycott.

Here’s why:

  1. All have harmful health effects.
  2. Countries in general have more regulatory control over these things so a boycott could be enacted faster. Ideally your government should lead the boycott using their regulatory authority or pass a law to make it happen if not possible yet. The reason why Canada’s alcohol boycott is so effective is because in Canada most alcohol is sold in state run stores so the government had the authority to stop selling it. This is key to success. However if not possible you can still boycott these products yourself.
  3. These products all in general tend to come from red states. Coca-Cola is headquartered in Georgia, USA and has such an impact that people nearby instead of saying pop or soda they call everything even Pepsi products a “Coke”. Red states are already feeling the effects of Canada’s boycott. In Kentucky they were already forced to shut down a Bourbon distillery. Tobacco is also heavily grown in red states. You can see this for yourself: https://tobacco.ces.ncsu.edu/2020/03/from-the-field-agronomy-notes-vol-4-num-2/

In addition while I have your attention I’ll reiterate suggesting boycotting fossil fuels and big tech social media. These also harm the environment (fossil fuels) and your own mental health (big tech). Lemmy and Piefed are already a great non-US alternative to Reddit so if you have friends still on Reddit help them join here. In general hopefully you notice the correlation between something being harmful and them supporting/donating to the Republican party. This tends to happen a lot so concentrating on boycotting what causes the most harm helps stop the Trump regime the most.

If you like any of these ideas please try contacting your politicians and make the suggestion. You could make a huge difference!

  • Lvxferre [he/him]@mander.xyzEnglish
    14·
    10 days ago

    Another way to give a big “fuck you” to the fossil fuels mafia is to stick to goods produced as close as reasonably possible from where you live. Specially in places that rely more on trucks than cargo trains.

    Of course, within the reasonable. For example odds are Canadians* won’t be able to buy locally produced coffee like I do, and tobacco production is a bit too small to feed the local market. Soda and booze, though? Odds are any large nearby city produces them.

    Speaking on that. My State (somewhere in South America) promoted a local ginger beer as “cultural and immaterial patrimony of the State”, as it’s being produced here for 120 years. Canadians might want to check if Canada and/or the provinces have something similar; because at the very least it’s great advertisement for local goods (specially in the current times), but sometimes it even gives the local producer some tax perks.

    *focusing on Canada due to the instance.

  • WxFisch@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    10 days ago

    As an American I support this take 100%. One thing to note though is that soft drinks are expensive to transport so are almost always bottled/made locally. Coca-Cola alone has 5 manufacturing plants in Canada and over 50 local sales and distribution centers. All that to say that soft drinks specifically may do more harm locally than to Coca-Cola corporate (or PepsiCo, KeurigDrPepper, etc.). Most of those companies are also significantly more diversified than distilling or tobacco companies so can weather boycotts easier. I’d say focus your effort where it can have the most impact for sure so keep up it up on Bourbon and add tobacco, other agricultural items like Pecans (grown mostly in the southeast US, or Almonds (grown mostly in California, but it’s still leverage).

    • BoycottTwitter@lemmy.zipOPEnglish
      3·
      10 days ago

      That’s a good point I didn’t think about. Maybe for people hurt locally by a pop boycott they could be given resources to transition to another job like renewable energy. Or maybe boycotting pop should not be the first priority because Tobacco and Alcohol is easier to boycott. Or another way to look at this is that pop isn’t good for your health no matter where it comes from and I’m sure health agencies would love an excuse to get people to stop drinking pop and maybe it would be worth it to them anyway. Or yet another way to think about this is if it forces a US company to leave then a local company could buy the factory. I guess now I’m a little conflicted about the best solution.

      One thing I will mention is that pop companies are sensitive to people stopping drinking their product because it’s kind of addictive or “they have a taste for it” and if people were cut off for enough time even when re-allowed later people may still not drink it as much. It’s actually comparable to when Twitter was briefly banned in Brazil and despite the ban being long over now Brazilians some still use Bluesky instead of Twitter to this day because of the ban.

      Also I saw the name “KeurigDrPepper” and I didn’t even realize they were the same company. Those Keurig machines are so wasteful! I hope everyone in the world will boycott those things.

  • phanto@lemmy.caEnglish
    8·
    10 days ago

    Instead of just “Boycott US pop”, may I suggest Cove Soda, Annex Soda, Rocky Mountain Brewing Company Cola, or Atypique? All are Canadian made, all beat Coke and Pepsi any day of the week, and I can personally vouch for all of them as fricking fantastic! Dr. Cove is like a milder Dr Pepper, Annex Cola is craft Cola done right, RMBC Black Cherry is to die for, and the Atypique Amaretto Sour is my go-to fake booze.

  • Rentlar@lemmy.caEnglish
    1·
    10 days ago

    Maybe I haven’t been to enough out of the ordinary restaurants, but I think part of the problem is that fountain pop will either be from PepsiCo or Coca-Cola beverage brands only. I can’t recall ever seeing a pop machine in Canada with special local options.