Oklahoma joins the ranks of states currently considering raising the tax on beer and other alcohol due to budget shortfalls, in effect punishing alcohol companies and the vast majority of people who enjoy drinking their products responsibly. According to the Oklahoman, the heads of three state health agencies, Health Commissioner Terry Cline, Mental Health Commissioner Terri White and Howard Hendrick, director of the Department of Human Services, “urged state lawmakers to raise the alcohol tax to help address a 2012 fiscal year budget deficit that could be as large as $800 million.” This is the same nonsense going around in other states whereby lawmakers go after a convenient target, often with the help of anti-alcohol groups, that they know play well to constituents raised on temperance propaganda that demonizes alcohol as a sin. But essentially the tax hikes aimed at alcohol punish both the companies that make the products and the majority of consumers who drink them responsibly and in moderation, while doing nothing whatsoever to address the root causes of the tiny minority that do abuse alcohol and drugs. They’re not remotely fair.
I’m as sorry as the next citizen that states can’t meet their budgets, but alcohol didn’t cause the problem and shouldn’t be called upon to fix it, either. We should have learned our lesson when this was first tried, during the Civil War, but we keep looking to lifestyles that some people find morally objectionable and trying to legislate that morality to punish people for their choices that differ from the self-righteous. But the budget problems Oklahoma, and many other states, are facing were not caused by alcohol. The specious “charge for harm” notion that the Marin Institute, and other anti-alcohol groups, are pushing is a flawed idea that argues that everybody who makes and drinks alcohol has to pay for any problems caused by a tiny minority that abuses it. But it continues to gain traction because if you beat a drum long enough, and never hear another beat, people start to believe the music is good.
For example “Howard Hendrick, director of the [Oklahoma] Department of Human Services, also said the state should look at increasing the alcohol tax to help pay for treatment and medical costs associated with the use of the product.” But the “medical costs” are not “associated with the use of the product,” if anything, they’re associated with its misuse, a very different thing. The assumption is that everybody that drinks alcohol is a burden on the nation’s healthcare system, but that is not only false, but backwards. The vast majority of people who drink, and who do so responsibly and in moderation, are actually living a healthier lifestyle and are less of a burden on healthcare as a direct result of their good drinking behavior. Such people will most likely live longer than abstainers or binge drinkers.
Hendrick concludes with this tortured bit of logic:
“We’re not saying you can’t drink, we’re not going to prohibition we’re just asking you to pay your share of the cost,” Hendrick said. “We’re just trying to deter people from behaving irresponsibly with alcohol.”
What nonsense. If I, and in fact most people, drink responsibly then we’re not costing society one penny more than any other person. If anything, by our moderation, we’re burdening the healthcare system less and are in fact saving money for the system. We have no “share of the cost” to pay. Raising the cost of alcohol through higher taxes in order “to deter people from behaving irresponsibly” is incredibly insulting to the majority who do not behave irresponsibly. But such logic is pervasive and does nothing to actually stop alcohol abuse. Like any addiction, an addict will find a way to get his preferred addiction by any means necessary.
The only thing that such measures accomplish is that they damage the economy, and place a greater burden on poor people, since alcohol taxes are very regressive. The higher taxes punish primarily law-abiding responsible citizens by raising the price of alcohol even though they’ve done absolutely nothing to deserve such a punishment and in fact have done just the opposite. Lawmakers just can’t let any good deed go unpunished, especially when they’re trying to fix their own mistakes without acknowledging their own culpability or making themselves look bad. Better to blame everything on alcohol. And why not, demonizing alcohol has worked quite well for over a century. There’s no reason to let the facts get in the way of a good story now.
And I thought Oklahoma was one of those conservative blue states.
@Mr. Nuts-It is but its from a very teetolling-protestant background, and its the home of many American Indian reservations. The American Indians of course have their own long, often sad story regarding alcohol.
@Brookston-We legislate morality continually, to greater or lesser effect, dependent on many things, not the least of which is the means to which the state is willing to go. Case in point-Saudi Arabia is a dry country and I dont think they have an Al Capone. Therefore I think this is a weak argument against sin taxes.
What I have a funamental problem with the the state picking winners and losers. It seems directly contrary to the spirit this country was founded on. So therefore I oppose things like Sin Taxes, but also the Child Income Tax Credit.
Wow, you’re holding up Saudi Arabia as a shining example of someone successfully legislating morality? Saudi Arabia is a brutal dictatorship where a single family rules with an iron fist. That’s the reason they don’t have an Al Capone, not because they’ve successfully legislated morality. Last year a woman there got 100 lashes (seriously) for having a business meeting with a man she wasn’t married to at a Starbucks. They still conduct public beheadings there under Sharia law, a religious rule based on Islam. That’s what happens when you allow religious rule to reign unchecked, and that’s your go to example? And you’re calling my argument weak?
I never said we don’t legislate morality, I said we shouldn’t, especially in cases where it reasonably differs. Not murdering people is moral, but most people agree that we shouldn’t legalize it. Drinking beer, on the other hand, is a moral decision for many people, often based on their religion. Because the morality of alcohol varies widely according to religion and/or lifestyle, is should NOT be used as a basis for law because it forces one set of morals on everybody. Most sin taxes originated at a time when religion was openly applied in law because the majority of people in power were all one religion and there was no meaningful dissent. While that’s still somewhat true, I’d like to believe we’re more enlightened today and that our laws reflect what’s best for as many people as possible and not just the moral code of a single religion or point of view.
Jay- I think you missed my point entierely. And also ended up supporting it. Saudi Arabia has no Al Capone becasue they have the Politcal Will to back up their beleifs. The will to be absoloutly horribly brutal. I never said it was right, or just, but it seems to be reality in Saudi Arabia. At least for now. Who knows how long before the lid comes off, if it ever does.
Lets take a more local, benign example. Insider Trading. It is currently illegal, and most everyone considers it wrong. However, this is a moral distinction. Unlike Murder, generally no one is directly harmed by insider trading. (Well apart from Casino Royale exploding airplane plots…) In previous generations insider trading was legal, and many probably would have considered it just another perk of their government/whatever job that gave them the info to act on. As a society we have decided this is not fair, or just. So it has now been made illegal, through legislation.
Back to my original point, I have no fundamental problems with a democratic nation defining what is ok and not ok within its boundaris. (Yes I know Saudi Arabia is not a democratic country, they were just an example) I may not like what those boundaires are and can either work to change them, or move somewhere else where they are different. I do not live in a dry country, for example.
Sin taxes (and excise taxes) are just one example of legislativly influencing winners and losers in our economic marketplace. Many are not based on any moral argument at all, but are specifically aimed at guiding or controlling economic activity. For examply, a city/state offering a targeted tax incentive to attract a major new employer. Making smoking illegal in certain types of private property (i.e. restraunts/bars) but not in a city/county in general.
Well I didn’t mean to do that. 😉 I’m not sure I’d call that “political will.” It’s more the threat of force than politics. Once the ruling family took power, it’s not been politics that has kept them in power, but brute force, military and police, and a willingness to be incredibly violent to their citizens. Maybe it’s just not the best example we could use.
Obviously I agree with you that “a democratic nation [can] define what is ok and not ok within its boundaries,” but I guess I disagree that that’s what’s going on in Oklahoma and indeed many of the examples in other states trying to raise the tax on alcohol. In the majority of cases I’ve seen, a non-governmental organization, often an anti-alcohol group with an agenda that’s at odds with the majority of people’s opinions, has used propaganda to influence politicians that there’s money to be had from one industry (in this case the alcohol industry). Politicians go for it because it’s a way to get money without raising all taxes, which means they can continue to campaign and keep their jobs by being able to say they didn’t raise taxes. And the reason that alcohol is a convenient target is precisely because of it being considered a “sin” rather than just something else people do. Ask yourself why alcohol and tobacco are the only two products that are subject to excise taxes at all. Even the three-tier system set up after Prohibition ended reinforces the notion that alcohol needs an extra layer of intervention because it’s believed to be an evil in our society. To me that’s not so much a win/lose democracy issue but a propaganda win that keeps on winning because it’s so embedded and internalized that we don’t even recognize it. Here’s how Ambitious Brew author Maureen Ogle put it in an Op-Ed piece she did for U.S. News & World Report:
I wrote about this a lot more a couple of years ago for one of our Session posts concerning the 75th anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition.
http://brookstonbeerbulletin.com/session-22-75-years-demonizing-alcohol/
The three individuals who head agencies in Oklahoma who are calling or the tax increase for alcohol are most likely not elected officials, so democracy is not directly at play here. They’re using their positions to ask politicians to use a strategy to raise money that doesn’t tax the general population directly. This is not the winners making the decisions over the protests of the losers. The majority of adults drink alcohol and a majority are likewise in favor of it remaining legal. Those are, in theory, the winners. But it’s the minority agenda, those that oppose alcohol, that’s being advanced here through the back door, so to speak. They’re manipulating the political process for their own ends, taking advantage of the economy, and advancing the losers position in the process, a win-win for them, a lose-lose for everybody else.
“They’re manipulating the political process for their own ends, taking advantage of the economy, and advancing the losers position in the process, a win-win for them, a lose-lose for everybody else.”
Well of course they are. It is however at least in part because we accept a third distinction between legal and illegal. (i.e. sin taxes) that this is even possible. I am a generally libertarian individual, I think everyone needs to mind their own bussiness far more than is currently the case in most places.
In the reality of today my overall objective would be to simplify our tax code as a means to reduce politicians (and regulators) power over us. Hopefully for you guys in California taxes will no longer be able to masquerade as “fees” That way at least there will be more of the proverbial “sunlight” on these things. Its a small step, but a start.
In the long run I am very much in favor of ideas like the Fair Tax, as it greatly reduces the ability of politicians and “do-gooders” to meddle in our day to day lives to fit their own agenda. Do I think it will happen in my lifetime? Unlikely. It would take a voter revolt several times larger and significantly more unified than even the most optimistic projections of the current Tea Party movement. But, if the economy takes long enough to recover, who knows how crazy politics will get in this country over the next few years?
As for the whole Saudi Arabia/Political Will discussion, dang that would be a fun one to chat about in person, with beer. Why is it the most interesitng conversations come up when I am online, supposedly working. 🙂