A new study finds that increasing the costs of beer, wine and hard liquor significantly reduces the rates of a wide range of alcohol-related deaths, diseases, injuries and other problems. The researchers at the University of Florida report that public policies that increase the price of alcoholic drinks not only reduce drinking but also significantly reduce most of the negative and expensive results connected with alcohol use.
According to the researchers, alcohol taxes have considerably larger effects than prevention programs on a state’s burden of problems created by alcohol. The results of the study suggest that doubling the average state tax on alcohol would mean, on average, a 35 percent reduction in alcohol-related deaths, an 11 percent reduction in car accident deaths, a 6 percent reduction in STDs, a 2 percent reduction in violence, and 1.4 percent reduction in crime.
"Our meta-analysis cumulated information from all the published scientific research on this topic over the past half century, and results clearly show increasing the price of alcohol will result in significant reductions in many of the undesirable outcomes associated with drinking," said Alexander C. Wagenaar, PhD, professor of health outcomes and policy at the University of Florida College of Medicine and the author of the study.
"Simply adjusting decades-old tax rates to account for inflation could save thousands of lives and billions of dollars in law enforcement and health care costs."
