Editor’s note: Don Keelan is a certified public accountant. He lives in Arlington. This column first appeared in the Bennington Banner.
Throughout Vermont there is signage banning the smoking of cigarettes, cigars and pipes (I happen to be a pipe user). The prohibition signs are the first warning when entering any public building—no smoking. Several communities have gone so far as to ban smoking in parks, on school grounds, at and around athletic fields.
At an annual cost in lost productivity of $97 billion in addition to a $94 billion charge to our health care system—the anti-smokers and their related campaign make a good point.
But herein lies the rub—why limit the aggressive, consistent and well funded anti-smoking campaign to just smokers? Cannot the same logic and reasoning apply to drinking — specifically, excessive alcohol consumption?
The November 2011 issue of the American Journal of Preventative Medicine calls our attention to some alarming statistics regarding “excessive drinking.”
Annually, 79,000 Americans die due to excessive drinking. From a cost perspective, the report notes that in 2006 (the latest year that data is available) the cost of excessive drinking was $223.5 billion, up 51 percent from 1992, when the cost was pegged at $148 billion.
So we are clear on the definition of excessive drinking as defined by the report — four drinks per occasion by women and five drinks per occasion by men.
The report details the total $232.5 billion cost in several interesting ways; binge drinking $170.6 billion; underage drinking, $26.9 billion, drinking while pregnant, $0.56 billion and crime related, $75.5 billion.
The last sector, crime related, plays a huge role in Vermont, according to several law enforcement officials that I’ve spoken with. Close to 80 percent of the criminal behavior police have had to deal with each year, is driven by alcohol-related incidents.
It is ironic, that several state agencies are in the business of selling/distributing liquor and collecting sales taxes on its consumption.
According to the Vermont Department of Liquor Control 2010 Annual Report, gross sales totaled $59.6 million and tax revenues were $14.9 million. Another $1.5 million dollars was collected in license fees. The total net revenue to the state when other liquor-related taxes are included is $23.78 million — equal to the average real estate taxes on approximately 10,000 single-family residences. Put another way for comparison purposes—if a city had a grand list of $1.5 billion and a tax rate of 1.5 percent, it would raise $24 million in taxes.
Another key analysis of the Journal’s $223.5 billion data was quite revealing. The cost of excessive drinking to various entities was calculated as follows:
Federal Government $40.1 billion
State & Local Government $53.5 billion
Families, and $92.8 billion
Others in society $36.4 billion
The cost of excessive drinking on the health care system is a fraction (still a big fraction) of that of smoking — $24 billion vs. $96 billion. Nevertheless, it is a substantial number and one that generally receives little attention from the health care industry. Nor does the cost of excessive drinking receive the publicity that smoking has received the past four decades — the cost of inactivity alone has been pegged by the report at $150 billion per year.
The study’s authors concluded that the following steps can be taken to mitigate the health, social and financial impact of excessive drinking:
1. increasing alcohol excise tax
2. limiting alcohol outlet density
3. keep the drinking age at 21
4. more counseling for misuse
5. more sobriety checkpoints
To this list I would add my own intervention point. I would have the state of Vermont get out of the liquor distribution business—it is a direct conflict of interest. I would also direct all state revenue from the sale of alcoholic beverages to the State’s General Fund and have the dollars designated to support the mitigation factors noted above.
It is time to end the double standard. It is time to put the issues of excessive drinking on par with that of smoking.
