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Social Host Law Enforcement Training Video
Posted on October 8th, 2009 by jclaypool
Operation Safeguard
Posted on August 8th, 2009 by jclaypool
AB 1019 Update & Correction
Posted on June 4th, 2009 by jclaypool
Assemblymember Jim Beall, Jr.’s bill, AB 1019, which would impose a ten cent fee on alcoholic beverages, was not killed in committee but strategically withdrawn when several key members failed to vote. Advocates hope the bill will gain momentum over the next year and eventually pass.
The proposed alcohol fee could potentially generate $1.4 billion in revenue to fund alcohol-related emergency medical and trauma care; hospitalization and rehabilitation services; treatment and recovery services; prevention, education, and research to prevent alcohol abuse; and criminal justice and enforcement programs.
Why Not Alcohol Taxes?
Posted on March 4th, 2009 by jclaypool
The following op-ed is being submitted to the UT by Policy Panel Member, Reverend John Hughes, MSW, CEO, Metro United Methodist Urban Ministry.
Why Not Alcohol Taxes?
Even in the midst of the worst state budget crisis in California history, the legislature failed to approve Governor Schwarzenegger’s proposed “nickel a drink” tax increase as part of the new budget overhaul. The tax increase would have reduced the state budget deficit an estimated 20% by levying a nominal per-drink charge on an industry that costs the state a whopping $38 billion annually.
The decision doesn’t make much sense. After all, alcohol taxes have failed to keep anywhere near the pace of inflation for the past several decades, so that now, quite remarkably, struggling families can buy a six-pack of beer for the price of one gallon of milk; a margarita costs less than a gallon of gasoline. For the hardworking citizens who will be hit with increased sales and income taxes as part of the budget crisis solution, the failure to raise a nickel also raises some tough questions.
Why was it unacceptable to impose a small fee on a substance that drains the economy and takes a serious toll on human lives and quality-of-life, particularly when it was acceptable to give pink slips to several thousands of teachers across the state while slashing extra-curricular programs and allowing class sizes to burst at the seams?
Why was a sensible, equitable public policy that would have not only raised an estimated $878 million over the next 18 months to help sustain critical public health and safety services summarily dismissed, particularly when said policy has been proven to save lives in addition to almighty dollars?
Here’s an even stranger mystery: Ammiano recently proposed Assembly Bill 390, which would allow marijuana to be sold openly in retail outlets statewide in order to tax a currently illegal substance in a desperate attempt to generate state revenue. Why on earth are our public leaders grasping at straws while viable, no-nonsense policies like the alcohol tax increase fall by the wayside?
The elephant in the room is the alcohol lobby: a powerful, sophisticated political machine that spends millions of dollars to sabotage policies like the tax increase that might help to offset the damages alcohol use inflicts on society. From car crashes and disease to violence and public nuisance issues, the role of alcohol in a host of individual and community problems is well-researched and only too well-documented.
We need to ask ourselves why the alcohol industry received yet another free ride? Why, yet again, has big business prevailed over the public good?
After all, the alcohol tax increase isn’t the only recent triumph of the alcohol lobby over the public’s best interest. Several attempts in California and states around the country to curtail some of the industry’s most dangerous marketing practices have been thwarted by a combination of well-financed legal defense and a political will that bows to the demands of its highest campaign contributors…tragically, even when young lives are on the line.
Public health advocates have been legally protesting the alcohol industry’s sale and targeted promotion of both “alcopops” and alcoholic energy drinks over the past few years. Alcopops or “Tot-tails” are cloying, brightly colored concoctions. It’s difficult to imagine anyone over the age of nineteen coming near one of these things, let alone drinking them. With binge drinking rates among young women at a dangerous, all-time high, putting girls at risk for sexual assault, unwanted pregnancies, STDs and a host of other problems, parents and community health advocates are outraged by a product that seems crafted to specifically entice this high-risk demographic. Alcoholic energy drinks, packaged in ways that make them virtually indistinguishable from their non-alcoholic counterparts, contain high doses of caffeine and taurine, which are again wildly popular among the under-twenty-one set.
While about half of the state attorney generals in the country have successfully banded together to pressure alcohol companies to voluntarily remove a handful of energy drinks from the market, the string of defeats is disheartening. The passage of AB 346 in California, which required a warning label for alcoholic beverages including energy drinks and alcopops was watered down to the point that the 3mm label is barely readable. The Board of Equalization’s decision to reclassify alcopops as liquor instead of beer was rendered meaningless once the alcohol makers claimed to reformulate the products, without offering a shred of evidence. Since the burden of proof rests on inadequately funded health advocacy groups, youth safety and well-being are plumb out of luck.
These defeats will continue until the public and the leaders who represent that public stand up to special interests, look the alcohol lobby squarely in the eye and say “enough.” We have to face facts: “Big Alcohol” exists just as surely as “Big Tobacco,” quietly operating behind the scenes to compromise public health in the name of monster profits, all the while lining the pockets of the powers that be.
In Defense of Alcohol Taxes
Posted on February 12th, 2009 by jclaypool
The following opinion piece is from Join Together Online.
For the Health (and Economy) of the Nation: Time to Tax Alcohol Fairly
February 11, 2009
I started drinking alcohol to excess at the age of 13. Drinking at this tender age is not uncommon. Among my friends, it was easy to steal a bit of liquor from bottles in our parents’ ample bars, and to go to the beach or hills and drink until we vomited. By high school, some of us were serious drinkers, and by college some of us were alcoholics. Some of us didn’t survive much longer due to accidents, and some died from causes related to alcohol later.
My peers and I saw drinking as cool, partly because so many of our heroes in sports, music, film and television did it, and there were fun-looking advertisements for drinking everywhere. Given my genetic and family history of alcoholism, I was fortunate that I escaped serious harm, and to this day can enjoy a glass of wine with dinner. But I am very aware how much alcohol use and abuse is ingrained in American teen culture and onward.
As with tobacco use, the patterns established in youth can determine one’s relation to alcohol for a lifetime. Upwards of 90 percent of both smokers and alcoholics start using in their teen years. Most, like me, can experiment without long-lasting problems, but many cannot. Thus, addiction — especially to tobacco and alcohol — remains what the American Medical Association has identified as our nation’s most pervasive private and public health problem.
Alcohol abuse costs us a lot. Just how much is unlikely to ever be fully determined, but a local organization has recently made a valiant attempt. Looking just at my home state, California, the Marin Institute, a private non-profit organization devoted to improving alcohol-related policy and reducing harms from drinking, released a 2008 report titled “The Annual Catastrophe of Alcohol in California.” (Disclosure: I serve on the Marin Institute’s volunteer board of directors).
The report makes for sobering reading. Marin found that the total economic cost to California from alcohol-related causes is $38 billion per year — $18 billion for illness, $8 billion in traffic/DUI costs, $8 billion for crime, and $4 billion for injuries. This is about twice the costs attributed to tobacco use. One can quibble with the numbers, but there is no denying that the societal burden imposed by alcohol use is substantial. For the nation as a whole, the costs are astronomical.
Addressing California’s huge budgetary shortfall, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed a 5-cents-per-drink tax increase on beer, wine, and distilled spirits. This would raise more than $878 million over the next 18 months, and be targeted at funding some crucial and under-funded services, including but not limited to addiction treatment.
California alcohol taxes have not increased since 1992, and then by only a penny. Opponents argue such taxes are onerous, or even akin to Prohibition. But taxing tobacco to pay for health costs is now widely accepted, and in fact President Obama has just expanded children’s health coverage with a substantial increase in such taxes.
On a national level, revenues from a similar alcohol tax increase would be very substantial. Perhaps most important, “Increasing alcohol taxes saves lives; that’s the bottom line,” as a recent studyby Wagenaar and colleagues from the University of Florida noted in the American Journal of Public Health.
We should acknowledge the uncomfortable fact that ‘Big Alcohol’ is no angel, having long used ‘Big Tobacco’-type tactics to market alcohol to kids — most recently in the form of “alcopops”, sweet alcoholic drinks with an obvious appeal to young drinkers. One of the big alcohol companies, MillerCoors, recently settled with a group of state Attorneys General and will stop marking alcohol-fueled “energy drinks,” another category of alcoholic beverages favored by teen drinkers. Again, as with tobacco, there is long history of alcohol marketing to teens in sneaky guises, including via sporting events and youth-targeted media.
A nickel a drink isn’t much — the Marin Institute actually feels 25 cents per drink is a more fair and supportable tax — but would raise a few billion dollars per year. While this would not solve our nation’s financial problems, it sure would help. Given the medical, public health, and economic facts, a fair increase in alcohol taxes is long overdue. We should take a similar approach as we have with tobacco, and use the funds to prevent alcohol abuse and pay for its related harms. After all, not every kid will be as lucky as I was.
Steve Heilig is co-editor of the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics and on the staff of the San Francisco Medical Society. Heilig was a Join Together Fellow and Advisory Board member, and currently serves on the Marin Institute’s volunteer board of directors.
Industry Dodges Alcopops Tax Increase
Posted on January 20th, 2009 by jclaypool
On the heels of two great victories for public health: a tax increase and mandatory warning label for “alcopops,” the alcohol industry has found a way to avoid compliance with the new laws.
The reclassification of alcopops as liquor would have taxed these dangerous, youth-friendly drinks at $3.30 per gallon instead of the beer rate of 20 cents per gallon. However, Diageo and other industry leaders skirted the tax increase by “altering” the formula so that the drinks do not fall under the state’s definition of liquor, which includes any beverages containing more than 0.5 percent of alcohol from flavorings derived from distilled spirits. The successful reclassification of alcopops also means these dubious drinks will not be subjected to the new warning label law.
Many public health advocates have doubts that any significant changes in ingredients have actually been made. Alas, the burden of proof is placed on the public, so the claims are difficult if not impossible to challenge.
Alcohol Ban at Silver Strand
Posted on January 8th, 2009 by jclaypool
Silver Strand State Beach, the lone San Diego County beach allowing beer and wine last summer, has adopted an alcohol ban between March 16 and Sept. 30, beginning this year. The decision follows a disorderly, alcohol-fueled Fourth of July weekend at the beach and a safer, more peaceful Labor Day weekend under a temporary booze ban.
The status of 2009 summer drinking is still undecided at beaches in Del Mar, Solana Beach and Torrey Pines State Beach. All three beaches implemented trial alcohol bans last year. Del Mar is considering adopting a permanent spring and summer alcohol booze ban.
Adolescents Vulnerable to Even Moderate Amounts of Alcohol
Posted on December 15th, 2008 by jclaypool
Excerpted from JTO Direct.
Even moderate amounts of alcohol can alter teens’ brain and liver function, possibly leading to higher alcohol tolerance later in life, according to new research from Baylor University.
For the study, researchers raised the blood-alcohol content of young male rats to between .05 and .09 percent through alcohol administration simulating low-dose binge drinking. They found that these rats exhibited higher tolerance for alcohol than a control group when exposed to alcohol again after several years of abstinence.
“Many people balance their alcohol consumption based on perceived changes in their behavior, and what we show is that you can have no changes in your behavior in terms of tolerance but still be changing liver and brain function that will produce tolerance later in life,” said lead researcher Douglas Matthews. “The body and brain are still developing during adolescence and this shows even a small amount of alcohol can have harmful effects.”
The study findings were published online Nov. 28, 2008 in the journal Alcohol.
This article summarizes an external report or press release on research published in a scientific journal. When available, links to the sources are provided above.
U.T. Opinion Piece on Alcohol Taxes
Posted on December 9th, 2008 by jclaypool
The San Diego Union Tribune ran an opinion piece by Policy Panel Chair, Beth Sise. The text is pasted below or you may read the article on the Sign On San Diego website.
Why it’s time to increase alcohol taxes
December 5, 2008
On the heels of an emergency legislative session to address California’s $18 billion budget deficit, we are facing the very real possibility that legislators will make deep cuts in the state budget for law enforcement, education, emergency medical services and health care. Should cutting essential health and safety services and shortchanging public education be our first line of defense or a last resort?
There is a better strategy to raise state revenue and reduce costs. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed a “nickel a drink” alcohol tax increase on wine, beer and distilled spirits to take effect Jan. 1, 2009. This long-overdue tax increase would generate an estimated $878 million over the next 18 months to help aid the state’s serious budget shortfall and support critical programs that address alcohol-related problems.
In addition, Assemblyman Jim Beall Jr., D-San Jose, has proposed an Assembly constitutional amendment that would increase the tax on beer by 30 cents per can or bottle. The excise tax would be levied against the manufacturer, who may choose to pass that cost onto consumers. Since beer is the beverage of choice among underage drinkers, it is also the culprit in a host of costly alcohol-related problems and tragedies.
Alcohol-related problems cost the state of California a whopping $38 billion annually. In San Diego County, the picture is no less bleak. In addition to being the No. 1 cause of death of young people, binge and underage drinking contribute to sexual assaults, teen pregnancy, scholastic failure and violent assaults, costing San Diegans more than $3.15 billion each year – far more than the $2.6 billion tab of the 2003 wildfires, a federally declared major disaster.
To put it another way, binge and underage drinking cost San Diegans just over $1,000 for every man, woman and child per year. Alcohol excise tax, licensing fees and sales taxes generate about $220 per person. The difference of $780 per person is backfilled through income tax. San Diego taxpayers are footing the bill, while the manufacturers of alcohol products continue to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.
Many citizens don’t realize the special treatment the alcohol industry has received for years, as it has successfully avoided paying its fair share of taxes. For decades, alcohol taxes have failed to keep the pace with inflation, making everyday items such as milk, bread and eggs less affordable than a six-pack of beer or a fifth of whiskey. In fact, the last alcohol tax increase in California was in 1992, and was only a penny on a glass of wine and two cents per can of beer and shot of spirits. Since that time, rising inflation has led to a 49 percent net decrease in state alcohol taxes.
In addition to generating state or federal revenue, taxes are also supposed to pay for the costs a given product imposes on society. Tobacco taxes, for example, have soared in recent years to more than $2 a pack in most states, in order to offset the tremendous societal cost and loss of life resulting from tobacco use. It’s only fair that the alcohol industry pitch in some extra change to help offset the $38 billion it costs Californians each year, especially now, when our state economy is in crisis.
It’s the change that’s smart. It’s the change that’s fair. It’s the change we need.
The 2003 wildfires were a natural disaster, unpredictable and unpreventable. The loss of life – the tragedy and suffering that too often result from binge and underage drinking, on the other hand, are all too predictable and largely preventable.
Alcohol tax increases, whether they be a “nickel a drink” or 30 cents a beer, have been proven to reduce everything from DUI crashes to cirrhosis to STDs. In fact, CNN reported on Nov. 13 that increased taxation on alcohol results in fewer deaths caused by or related to the effects of drinking. A 28-year study in Alaska found a 29 percent decrease in alcohol-related deaths when taxes were raised in 1983 and another 11 percent reduction in deaths attributed to alcohol following a 2002 tax increase. Conversely, a study from Finland found that when the tax on alcohol was lowered by 33 percent to 44 percent in an effort to protect domestic alcohol sales, alcohol consumption increased by 50 percent and deaths attributed to alcohol jumped 20 percent.
Increased alcohol tax is the change that can save dollars. It’s the change that can save lives. It’s the change we need.
We cannot afford to subsidize cheap alcohol, while we cut the number of police officers who protect us. We cannot afford to subsidize cheap alcohol while we cut emergency medical staff who save our lives when we are in trauma. It’s time to end the free ride for alcohol manufacturers and support legislation that will require them to pay a small portion of their fair share. It’s the change that’s long overdue. It’s the change that’s good for everyone. It’s the change we need.
Sise is chair of the San Diego County Alcohol Policy Panel.Increased Alcohol Taxes Save Lives
Posted on November 18th, 2008 by jclaypool
Two important tax increase proposals are currently under legislative review. California Governor Schwarzenegger has proposed a “nickel a drink” alcohol tax increase on wine, beer and distilled spirits (see previous post for details). In addition, Assembly Member Jim Beall, Jr. has proposed an Assembly Constitutional Amendment that will increase the tax on beer by 30 cents per can or bottle. The excise tax would be levied against the manufacturer, who may choose to pass that cost onto consumers.
Alcohol tax increases, whether they be a “nickel a drink” or 30 cents a beer, have been proven to reduce everything from DUI crashes to cirrhosis to STDs.
In fact, CNN reported on November 13 that increased taxation on alcohol results in fewer deaths caused by or related to the effects of drinking. A 28-year study in Alaska found a 29% decrease in alcohol-related deaths when taxes were raised in 1983 and another 11% reduction in deaths attributed to alcohol following a 2002 tax increase.
A study from Finland found that when the tax on alcohol was lowered by 33 to 44% in an effort to protect domestic alcohol sales, alcohol consumption increased by 50% and deaths attributed to alcohol jumped 20%.
Whether it’s a nickel a drink or thirty cents a beer, increased alcohol taxes is the change that saves lives. It’s the change that’s long overdue. It’s the change we need.