The article states that higher taxes tended to reduce drinking among social drinkers and problem drinkers, teens and adults but failed to address alcoholics or alcohol dependent drinkers. These are the people who are the real sociatal problem in tems of medical problems, high cost, drunk diving deaths and consume a high percentage of the alcohol sold. Until we determine which segments reduce consumption, we have no way of knowing how much of the problem has been solved. Social drinkers who don't drink for effect would seem to be the most likely to cut back. Higher cost could reduce consumption without solving many of the problems communities have with alcohol. It has been shown that addicted drinkers will obtain alcohol by any means possible. There might have a long term effect if younger drinkers have less access to alcohol. A good study might be to see what effect the recessive economy has on teens with less money to spend now.

Just as cigarette tax hikes reduce cigarette consumption, alcohol tax hikes reduce alcohol consumption. Its simple Economics 101. Similarly, price increases have the greatest impact on those who consume the most, and have the least impact on those who consume the least. But the primary reason for increasing alcohol taxes should not be to reduce excessive drinking, but rather to cover a higher percentage of the huge and growing costs due to excessive drinking upon government agencies (e.g. police, fire, EMT, drug treatment and other healthcare services, courts, jails, etc.).

Programs, such as higher taxes on alcohol, that reduce drinking among problem drinkers and teen drinkers is significant. According to the World Health Organization's Department of Mental Health and Substance Dependence's AUDIT (Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test), all alcoholics go through a period of alcohol abuse but not all alcohol abusers become alcoholics. Further, NIAAA reports that of all people who've ever met the diagnostic criteria for alcoholism, nearly half did so by age 21 and two-thirds by age 25. Clearly a program, such as higher taxes on alcohol, that can reduce underage drinking is important in the overall effort to curb alcohol abuse and dependence.

richburtz, I agree. Almost. Consider your basic frat boy. Is neither alcoholic nor alcohol-dependent. But..gets stinking blind drunk every single Friday and Saturday night. (Insert sound of frat boys protesting too muchly here.) This segment of drinkers IS responsible for a significant amount of mayhem; be it traffic crashes, rapes, unplanned pregnancies. On the non-mayhem side, this leech is attending a state university; I'm paying for his education, and when he drops out because he partied instead of studying, my money has been wasted. This frat boy segment IS impacted by tax increases. We are less traumatized, as a society, if this guy drinks less on Friday and Saturday night. One less beer may be the difference between remembering the condom, realizing that maybe he shouldn't drive, and even making it to class on Monday morning. These are the intangible, unmeasureable improvements that make me support higher alcohol taxes...in any form.

If alcohol taxes could be used for prevention and treatment of alcohol/drug problems, that would be extremely helpful to the field. Since gas taxes can be used for the roads and bridges, why couldn't we utilize alcohol taxes for prevention and treatment?? The benefits of lower amounts of drinking and help with the costs of problems it creates is a WIN/WIN.

Raising the price on anything will reduce its use. The thrust of the article seems to be "look we found a great new way to reduce alcohol use" but this misses the big point. An individual state can make any consumption laws it wants, from thing like limiting the quantities that can be sold, licensing requirements to serve alcohol at parties, even up to making alcohol within its borders completely illegal. So if the goal is to reduce consumption, doing so by an indirect method like raising the price seems rather silly. The point behind the Piguvian tax is to reimburse the state for the social cost of drinking. If drinking directly or indirectly costs the state 10 million dollars, then the state should levy a tax in the amount of less than $10 million to compensate for it. The tax should be less than 10 million, because use will go down. This is a well known property of taxation that should be understood and known by the people in the treasury department of a state or local government. If legislatures are too weak to pass real controls then resorting to “let’s just make it more expensive” is a way to avoid the problem. They should be replaced with people who will address problems