Based on empirical studies measuring the link between alcohol taxes and alcohol-related injuries, I estimate the legislation will cause between 280 and 660 additional motor vehicle deaths a year and approximately 1,550 total alcohol-related deaths annually from all causes. . . .<\/p>\n
Based on economic evidence of the negative externalities imposed by alcohol, the total local, state and federal tax on alcohol should be roughly four times higher than it is now, and certainly not lower.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The objective, rather than simply raising revenue, would be two-fold:\u00a0 to \u201cpay for\u201d the costs associated with drinking (traffic deaths from drunk driving, increases in violence and suicide associated with heavy drinking, and general ill-health), and to reduce the amount of drinking that occurs in the first place.\u00a0 In that sense, the taxes would function like those on cigarettes.<\/p>\n
But alcohol isn\u2019t like cigarettes.<\/p>\n
So far as I understand, the health problems associated with alcohol are not related to drinking, in general, but caused by drinking-to-excess, either on an ongoing basis (alcoholism) or at any given period in time (binge drinking).\u00a0 It\u2019s also generally accepted, so far as I know, that moderate social drinking is perfectly fine and (though this could be junk science, for all I know) can even have moderate health benefits.\u00a0 And there\u2019s a line of thought that says that the more an individual (or community) is conditioned to social drinking, the less likely they are to engage in binge drinking \u2014 that is, that binge drinking is at least in part a consequence of the way we treat drinking in the U.S., technically illegal but commonly engaged in, in an underground fashion, by under-21s, and with the hidden nature of the illegal drinking producing behaviors such as \u201cpre-gaming\u201d at college (that is, doing shots in one\u2019s dorm room prior to going out to a public activity where drinking isn\u2019t possible).\u00a0 If young adults grew up with the idea that drinking was something that one did in moderation, and gained experience with that at the family dinner table, the argument goes, then they wouldn\u2019t binge.<\/p>\n
Is that right or wrong?\u00a0 It makes sense, anyway.\u00a0 And Looney\u2019s idea that all alcohol is alike and should be treated the same, doesn\u2019t make sense.\u00a0 Hoity-toity imported wine, which he suggests is just as nefarious as a fifth of Popov\u2019s vodka, really isn\u2019t.\u00a0 You\u2019re not going to pay $20 or $30 for a bottle of wine that you intend to drink quickly for the purpose of getting drunk.\u00a0 Same with a bottle of snooty craft beer vs. a keg of Budweiser.<\/p>\n
In this respect, as well, the pro-pot advocates who say that being high is less of a danger to oneself and society than being drunk miss the mark, because smoking pot is exclusively about getting high.\u00a0 Different kinds of pot produce different kinds of highs, but there is no sense in which people smoke pot for any other purpose, as there is with alcohol.<\/p>\n
And Looney cites studies calculating the \u201celasticity\u201d of alcohol, that is, the extent to which increased prices produce decreased consumption.\u00a0 But, again without having any data at hand, it seems to me that, when taxed to make alcohol disproportionately expensive, it is social drinking that you\u2019d decrease, not drinking-to-excess.\u00a0 You\u2019d cause people to be less likely to get that glass of wine or craft beer at a restaurant, and choose pop instead.\u00a0 You\u2019d decrease the frequency of people having a glass of wine with dinner at home.\u00a0 But would it really change the behaviors of those who are drinking-to-get-drunk?<\/p>\n
Now, look, I\u2019m not a big fan of taxing to change behavior, and of vice taxes in general.\u00a0 (Alcohol was much cheaper and less regulated in Germany than here, for instance.)\u00a0 And I certainly think that this tax change doesn\u2019t belong in a bill that claims to\u00a0be about tax simplification.\u00a0 But if we\u2019re going to have vice taxes, we should at least be smart about them, and\u00a0recognize that not all alcohol consumption is the same.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Image:\u00a0https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File%3ARed_wine_closeup_in_glass.jpg; By Quinn Dombrowski (originally posted to Flickr as Wine) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Remember the Women\u2019s Christian Temperance Union?\u00a0 I should remember more of it than I do, from my grad school days, but it seems to me I\u2019ve got a book somewhere down in the basement, unless it made its way to a donation bin by now.\u00a0 I recall two things:\u00a0 that they had genuine concerns about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":5798,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[516,38,774],"class_list":["post-7764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-alcohol","tag-tax-reform","tag-taxation"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/p>\n