California needs to raise alcohol tax

By Maria Reyes & Teri Rockas

WE'VE ALL HEARD about Marin County's high rates of alcohol use. Our kids are drinking at rates higher than children in most other places in the country.

They binge drink at parties, in hotel rooms and on buses.

In Marin, data shows that one in six ninth-graders and 66 percent of 11th-graders engaged in binge drinking in the past 30 days.

With alcohol outlets on just about every street, why should we be surprised? Advertisements tell kids how, when and where to drink — making it the cool thing to do when hanging with friends. Then what?

Bad things happen. Kids die. There's car crashes, sexual assaults, fights, crime, jail time, legal costs, hospitalizations. Missed school, lost opportunities, friends gone forever.

One person dies and there are 533 incidents of violent crime every hour related to alcohol in California.

The cost of drinking is so much greater than the six bucks it costs to buy a six-pack. In California, harm from alcohol use costs $38 billion annually — almost twice the state's budget deficit!

Last fall, Novato mourned the death of a 15-year-old boy, the victim of a crash caused by a teen who had been drinking. Less than two years ago, we buried a 9-year old girl who was killed by a drunken driver while in a crosswalk with her dad.

In 2005, we buried two young men who crashed their truck after leaving a party.

While we can't measure these kinds of losses in dollar amounts, we can insist the alcohol industry pay for the harm done to our children, our families, our community and our state.

The Novato Blue Ribbon Coalition for Youth, a coalition of organizations, agencies, schools, municipal leaders, parents, youth and service groups, is concerned with the harm caused by alcohol consumption and related risky behaviors.

We feel it is more than appropriate to make the alcohol industry pay its fair share for the harm its products cost our youth, families, community and the state.

The last time California imposed a higher tax on alcohol was in 1992 — a penny for every glass of wine and two cents for a can of beer. Adjusted for inflation, the value of that tax has declined 45 percent since 1992.

Everyone else's taxes have increased in the past 20 years — it's only fair that the alcohol industry be financially accountable as well.

A proposed tax increase of 25 cents per drink could raise $3.5 billion for California's budget in the next fiscal year.

As our state officials look for ways to cut spending, eliminate services and reduce costs, it makes sense that they insist an industry whose sales top $20 billion a year in our state alone pay its share for the harm it does.

We think so.

A tax increase would lower alcohol consumption by our youth and, at the same time, generate income for the state to mitigate some of the harm done.

A true win-win solution.

Please join the Novato Blue Ribbon Coalition for Youth in supporting a "Charge for Harm" alcohol excise tax.

Join us in letting state Sen. Mark Leno, Assemblyman Jared Huffman and Gov. Jerry Brown know that a tax on alcohol is the change we need and a change that the residents of the state support.

Maria Reyes and Teri Rockas are co-chairs of the Novato Blue Ribbon Coalition for Youth.