Booze Taxes Lower Alcohol-Linked Deaths(.20 per gallon in 2002. While most state...),Health

In Alaska, however, Wagenaar and his colleagues found evidence that even after accounting for general improvements in health care, the imposition of a substantial alcohol tax was tied to an almost instantaneous public health reward.

Following the 1983 tax bump, 23 more deaths were averted per year -- a 29 percent drop in mortality that continued to hold up over time. Following the 2002 bump, another 21 deaths were averted annually, another 11 percent plunge.

What's more, Alaska's alcohol taxes appeared to be more powerful than other prevention efforts designed to reduce alcohol-related death rates. Specifically, the two taxes were deemed to be two to four times as effective in lowering death rates as anti-drinking media campaigns or school programs aimed at getting teens to curb their drinking.

"Basically, this was a simple adjustment of an existing policy that didn't involve increasing new health programs or interventions or spending large amounts of money," Wagenaar noted. "And it should be pointed out that in public health, if we do something that reduces the death rate by just 3 or 5 percent, that's considered to be a major success. And these tax increases reduced the risk of death from alcohol-related disease far more substantially than that."

"So, the implication for the other states and the country as a whole is quite amazing," Wagenaar added. "Just think of the healthcare cost that would be saved if we reduced the death rates across the whole country. And this is absolutely something that's not impossible to do."

Dr. Marc Galanter, director of the division of alcoholism and drug abuse in the psychiatry department at New York Univers
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