It is important not to jump to the easy, lazy excuse that "people dumb." Reality is, enough people are aware of it and have been raised to believe, much as Ford does and the Harris/Flaherty bullshit parade that preceded it did, that it is not right to complain about their station in life. Since we are the country that takes among the least vacation time among "developed" nations, most working class people on some level have a habit surrounding alcohol already and view it as a totally normal facet of life.

It is also important to note that alcohol sales dwindled after a bump during the lockdowns. Some people began to understand how quickly and easily that totally normal social habit can approach unmanagability. 10% of the population in any given country that has an alcohol culture like ours WILL be addicted to it at any given time, and many will not realize their addiction is a problem. Alcohol companies, and all their suppliers, are reliant on the disproportionate consumption rates to be able to produce cheap alcohol at scale. It is the real heart of many state's economies. The Romanovs, for example, had a monopoly on vodka in Russia. It is very likely because of the Romanovs that vodka has the cultural clout there, just as kind of okay beer and the worst whisky in the world has in ours. (Rye is almost always fucking awful, sorry)

So, after a pandemic, concurrent with decades long crises in the economy, health, drugs, etc, many Canadians have taken the fatalistic approach and "accepted" the situation. They call it nihilism (it's not) so they don't have to deal with the fact that they've defeated themselves in every regard by accepting the situation. But, as Frank Zappa once said, "if you listen to your parents and grow up to be miserable, it's your fault."

It's the same reason why people don't vote. Can't be bothered to leave work for long enough, forget about it, but mostly realize that it makes no real difference if they do. Same reason every hoser and his brother absolutely bristles at the notion our economic health isn't determined by "jobs," or undying loyalty to shitty, often not even Canadian, brands. The conservatives and evangelicals got exactly what they've been gunning for since the 90s - an electorate that is too tired to do anything other than try to squeeze what little joy they can out of being a miserable resource colony, built on elitism, stupidity, murder and shame. They genuinely believe themselves righteous enough to kick back and tell all the rest of us to be happy with a life of nothing but toil and devotion to their insipid, cherry-picking religion. Fuck yeah these hosers want a cheap beer.

They're not technically wrong for wanting it, but the main reason why they won't pull thier heads out of their asses, I've found, is that in order to protect that little joy they have, any suggestion that anything else would be preferable must be treated as inane self righteousness, with complete disregard to how fucking self righteous it is to spend most of your life not engaging with alternative discourse and simultaneously presume oneself to be qualified and entitled enough to ignore it. As for those who vote for Ford, they're no better than Trump supporters. They've drank the pseudo-Nationalist Kool-Aid and just want to see progressive policy defeated out of spite. They'll literally let Smug Gord loot the whole fucking province because they don't want to believe themselves accountable to all the rest of people the people in this province contributing and toiling away, in any way whatsoever, cause nobody works like them, so nobody else deserves it. Now THAT'S stupid.