A new British Columbia campaign, Under the Influence, invites people to look again at how often alcohol appears in ordinary daily settings. The campaign is led by the Pacific Public Health Foundation and brought forward together with several provincial and Indigenous health partners, including the BC Centre for Disease Control, First Nations Health Authority, Fraser Health, Interior Health, Island Health, Métis Nation British Columbia, Northern Health and Vancouver Coastal Health.

Its central message is simple: “once you notice it, it’s everywhere.” The campaign asks people to pay attention to alcohol in familiar routines, social media, television, restaurants, transit advertising, clothing, family gatherings and celebrations, and to consider how repeated exposure can make drinking feel normal, expected, or even automatic.

The campaign is not built around blaming individuals for drinking. Instead, it focuses on the environment around them. It points to alcohol availability, visibility and marketing as factors that help create permissive drinking cultures. The campaign website notes that high alcohol availability is linked with increased alcohol consumption, and highlights the scale of alcohol advertising in Canada, including more than 500,000 alcohol advertisements broadcast on Canadian radio and television in 2018.

The campaign also connects these everyday influences with alcohol-related harm. Its website highlights that alcohol can cause at least seven types of cancer, and that alcohol use is estimated to cause 18,000 deaths and 105,000 hospitalizations in Canada each year. It also notes that alcohol-attributable healthcare costs in Canada are estimated at 6.3 billion Canadian dollars annually. Under the Influence includes practical prompts for people who want to respond to these influences, including choosing social activities that do not revolve around alcohol, reducing alcohol-related content in social media feeds, and noticing how local alcohol availability can shape everyday choices.

Find more from https://seealcoholdifferently.ca/ (Canada, May 2026)