TheAgitator.com
Booze, Sex, Cancer, Violence
Thursday, July 22nd, 2004Do I have your attention?
Vice Squad proprietor Jim Leitzen is guest-blogging over at Overlawyered, and I’m afraid his first post is a bit of a disappointment.
(Belated note after I wrote this post: He’s awfully squishy on banning alcohol advertising, too.)
The University of Chicago professor and economist says we should increase taxes on alcohol, and writes, “…the good effects that stem from higher alcohol taxes are almost staggering: I canât think of any other single policy that would be likely to have such broad benefits.”
Before I get into Leitzen’s list of alleged benefits, we should note here that he’s assuming it’s okay — even advisable — to use tax policy to manipulate personal behavior. That’s a point I’d contest at the outset, regardless of what follows. We shouldn’t use the state to restrict access to legal products tens of millions of people use responsibly because a subset of the population uses them irresponsibly. Yes, we do it all the time. That doesn’t mean we should. And when the data linking the supposed externalities to use of the product is shaky as it is with alcohol, we ought to be especially cautious.
But on to Leitzen’s benefits:
Lower suicide rates:
It sounds absurd on its face, doesn’t it? We need to read taxes on alcohol so fewer people will commit suicide.
Yes, alcohol is a depressant. But it’s hard to see how adding a few pennies or dimes to the cost of a drink is going to dissuade anyone otherwise en route to suicide. Put another way, if we accept that consuming an excess of alcohol might make an already depressed person suicidal, would adding a small percentage to the cost of a drink is going to make them any less likely to either (a) drown their sorrows in booze, or (b) use booze to find the nerve to pull off the act itself?
(Er, rhetorical question.)
Some might also argue that the effects of alcholism on one’s family, career, self-esteem, and such may push people into depression, which could lead to suicide. But again, a few cents on the bottle isn’t going to make an alcoholic less likely to drink in the first place. It’s hard to even accept that a $14.99 case of beer versus a $10.99 case of beer would even deter that many people from starting to drink. But I’m not an economist. So I’ll defer.
I also suspect there are cause and effect problems here. I’m more inclined to think that people prone to suicide are more likely to drink than that drinking makes people more prone to suicide. Alcohol tends to enhance mood more than it creates mood. But that’s just a hunch. I’m not aware of any data on the point.
I’ll be generous, and call the suicide point a push.
Lower cancer rates:
I have lots of problems with this one. Studies do show that excessive alcohol consumption can minimally raise the risk of certain types of cancer (mostly esophagus cancer and upper digestive tract cancers, and breast cancer in women), but only by very small amounts — somewhere in the range of 3-6 percent. And excessive consumption ranks far behind numerous other factors, including family history, diet, exercise, and viral infections (Primary Source (though there are many others): Harvard Men’s Health Watch).
But that’s excessive consumption. Dozens upon dozens of studies have shown moderate alcohol consumption can reduce the risk of several types of cancer. Moderate beer consumption, for example, can reduce the risk of breast, colon and ovarian cancer. And by now we’ve all seen the numerous studies about the benefits of antioxidants and flavinoids, which abound in red wine and hoppy beer.
The American Cancer Society has conducted two surveys on the topic. One found a 20% overall cancer risk reduction in participants who consumed 1-2 drinks per day, and a 17% risk reduction in those who consumed 3-4. The study also found that overall, up to four drinks per day significantly reduced the odds of premature mortality.
A second study from the American Cancer Society surveyed just under a half million people, and found that excessive drinkers did indeed increase their risk of cancer. But it also found — again — that light and moderate drinkers had the lowest rate of cancer occurence and the lowest premature mortality rate of anyone in the study — lower than those who didn’t drink at all.
(Both studies culled from The Science of Healthy Drinking, by Gene Ford — a source with an admitted agenda, but there’s certainly no arguing with the American Cancer Society’s motives.)
Ford goes on to list 28 other studies either touting alcohol’s role in reducing cancer risk, or casting doubt on its role in raising it. In my own paper, I found even more studies concluding that moderate alcohol consumption can reduce the risk of prostate cancer and, in the case of wine, some skin cancers.
And that’s just cancer.
In 1994, the Journal of the American Medical Association editorialized that moderate alcohol consumption could save as many as 80,000 lives a year in the U.S. alone.
In summarizing dozens of studies on alcohol’s health effects, Abigail Zuger wrote in the New York Times in 2002:
“A drink or two a day of wine, beer, or liquor is, experts say, often the single best nonprescription way to prevent heart attacks — better than a low-fat diet or weight loss, better even than vigorous exercise. Moderate drinking can help prevent strokes, amputated limbs and dementia.
She quotes Dr. Curtis Ellison of the Boston University School of Medicine in the same article:
“The science supporting the protective role of alcohol is indisputable; no one questions it anymore . . .There have been hundreds of studies, all consistent.”
Ford’s book too lists hundreds of studies showing the benefits of moderate consumption on aging, diabetes, stroke, heart disease, high blood pressure, Alzheimer’s, gastro-intestinal problems, osteporosis, and gall stones — among others.
You’re free to find fault with those studies, of course. Just as I question why most every study proclaiming alcohol’s deleterious effects is inevitably funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. But there’s certainly room for debate on the issue. And most honest medical folks I think would support the claim that the most recent science is now showing far more benefits to moderate consumption than drawbacks.
So what about those nasty effects on the hard drinkers? Well, ask yourself, who’s more likely to be deterred by moderate increases in the excise tax — moderate drinkers or hard drinkers and alcoholics?
It’s hard to buy the idea that folks prone to giving up their jobs and families for an alcohol habit would voluntarily give up drinking if only the legislature or Congress would kick up the exise tax a few percentage points.
It’s far more likely that a tax increase would diminish consumption among moderate drinkers. And I’d suggest that the science outlined above says that the effect would amount to a net loss in public health, not a net gain.
Increased STD transmission:
I agree with Leitzel, here. It’s hard to see how increased alcohol consumption doesn’t lead to more sex, riskier sex, and therefore a greater rate of STD infection.
But I’m also not sure that raising taxes on alcohol would change this much. Our target groups here are teens (I’ll get to them in a minute), and of-age drinkers who consume alcohol to lower inhibition.
Perhaps a moderate excise tax would decrease consumption at the margins in these groups, but both are drinking alcohol because it’s alcohol. That is, they’re drinking alcohol because of the effects only alcohol can have (getting drunk), not because of its price relative to other beverages. If you’re drinking because you like the buzz you get from booze, raising the price of alcohol isn’t going to make you opt for a Red Bull.
That said, I’ll concede that this is Leitzel’s strongest case. Increased excise taxes probably would mean at least a fewer people consuming alcohol. Which would mean fewer people having alcohol-induced sex, and there would likely be fewer cases of unprotected sex. And thus, fewer trasmissions of STDs.
Violent Crime:
I haven’t seen studies directly on point, but my guess is that you’d need to increase excises taxes by far more than Leitzel is willing in order to see a measurable derease in alcohol-related crime. And don’t forget, in places like England and Sweden where they have significant excise taxes on beer and booze, they also have thriving black markets to smuggle alcohol over from the mainland. And where there are black markets, there is crime.
At any rate, here’s an NBER paper from the University of Connecticut linking higher beer taxes to lower rates of assault, but finding no link between beer taxes and incidence of rape or robbery. And here’s a 1997 Department of Justice study that purports to link alcohol and violent crime.
The interesting thing about the latter study is that it acknowledges that alcohol-related crime is actually trending downward, and has been since 1981. That shouldn’t be happening if, as Leitzel notes, the excise tax on alcohol in real dollars has also been falling over the same period.
The Adam Smith Institute points out that those areas of Europe that have liberalized alcohol laws (Scotland and Denmark, for example), have seen corresponding drops in alcohol-related crime.
And as Leitzel acknowledges, the ultimate effort to curb alcohol’s negative externalities — U.S. Prohibition — effected far more crime than alcohol ever did.
Fewer auto crashes:
I don’t buy this one, either. I don’t have time for sourcing (again, check my paper), but even NHTSA acknowledges that moderate alcohol consumption doesn’t cause significant driver impairment. You’re far more likely to crash from having kids in the back seat, eating, or fumbling with the radio than from a drink or two. Alcohol starts causing accidents (and fatalities) in significant numbers once you’re well past the legal BAC threshhold — generally at .15 and up. Again, it’s tough to see how anyone oblivious enough to his own safety and the safety of those around him to get behind the wheel at .15 or higher is going to be dissuaded by a few cents more per drink. Or even a quarter. Or a dollar.
Sure, a moderate increase in excise taxes may persuade a few people not to have a second or third drink. But second or third drinks don’t cause a whole lot of accidents. And I’m not sure the few it might prevent would offset the general economic damage done by higher excise taxes, or if they’re worth violating the general principle that government ought not meddle in behavior control via the tax code.
Kids would drink less, and binge less often:
Since when are brand-conscious American teenagers dissuaded by higher prices? If it’s hip to drink, kids will spend money on booze. Giving well-off kids a bigger advantage to access alcohol won’t make less affluent kids want it any less. And again, if kids are drinking to get drunk, making alcohol cost more isn’t likely to make them drink more Coke. They’ll just switch to a cheaper type of alcohol.
The best way to eliminate underage alcohol abuse and binge drinking is to abolish the legal drinking age. Kids binge drink because booze is forbidden fruit, because they only have access to alcohol for short periods of time, and because when they do have access, it’s generally in situations where there’s no adult supervision. Abolishing the drinking age would take care of all three problems.
In truth, underage drinking has been falling steadily since 1980, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Addiction. It’s been falling among all age groups. Binge drinking has been in decline as well.
Once again — if excise taxes have been falling in real dollars over that same period, and lower taxes make kids drink more, shouldn’t we be seeing increases in teen drinking?
A 1999 study by T.S. Dee in the Journal of Public Economics examined only in-state variances in beer taxes and their effects on teen consumption, under the theory that cross-state comparisons failed to account for differences in cultural attitudes toward alcohol. Dee found no link between beer taxes and underage drinking — among either high school or college-aged kids.
There are significant fairness issues with excise taxes, too. Why should the bulk of drinkers — who are responsible — pay for the actions of the small subset of irresponsible drinkers?
And like all sin taxes, alcohol taxes are also terribly regressive. And if raising taxes on drink produces the same effects that have come from raising taxes on cigarettes, they’ll grow more regressive over time — studies show that middle and higher-income people are far more likely to cut back on cigarettes because of excise taxes than lower-income people.
is my browser broken, or was there not one of those handy “hide/show the extra text” things for this Faulknerian post?
As a former teen let me say this, if alcohol was more expensive we would have just done more drugs, plain and simple.
Radley, thanks much for the insightful post. I’ll try to reply on Overlawyered tomorrow. But I do want to mention that the cancer/suicide/STD opening riposte was mainly a tease — my chief reason for thinking that there are benefits to higher alcohol taxes is in the lower auto crashes. But more, I hope, tomorrow.
Thanks again — I am trying to write something non-blogospheric on vice taxes and your post is really helpful.
Balko
Radley Balko has a couple nice posts up. First he reams Jim Leitzen for suggesting a higher tax on alcohol
We have high alcohol taxes here in the UK. We have problems related to alcohol fuelled violence etc. in this country.
France has much less tax on alcohol but considerably less problems with violence etc.
I think it’s the culture, not the price.
I like the occasional hamburger, a social drink and i smoke. The idea that my pocket should be hit because of the frailty of a few is beginning to repel me.
Radley, you might find a lot of information discrediting these ‘Epidemiology Studies’ at Number Watch. The Number of the Month section is priceless.
The 3-6% increases in risks are a dead giveaway of junk science. Typically a large trojan number is used (15,000 people) with a small actual sample of people (50 or so, buried in the fine print). One of them remembers going on a bender in 1982 (or maybe it was 1972) - having 7 drinks in one night, golly, gee. Said individual gets cancer 30 years later and the neo-scientist proclaims “See, alcohol increases cancer risks by 3%”, after rounding up the numbers.
The Scientist gets a new feather in his cap, or a PhD, so he is happy, the news media has a story to tell, and the public panics and stops drinking like the pack of lemmings we all are.
Here is the site. It is set up by a crusty, old scientist who is fed up with the medieval nature of current ’science studies’.
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/default.htm
If booze is more expensive, people will consume smaller amounts of liquid. Not get less drunk. In fact, they well probably get more drunk.
Taxed alcohol makes hard liquor more cost effective. To get to the desired level of inebriation, beer and wine will have diminishing bang for the buck.
So instead of people monitoring their level of drunkedness with entire cans of beer, they will be doing so with shots. It takes more time to consume an entire can of beer than it does to consume a shot. Getting more smashed than intended is a lot easier with hard liquor.
If drunk driving is the concern, encouraging hard liquor consumption isn’t a good idea.
Well, if lowering alcohol consumption a little is a good idea, than maybe banning alcohol altogether is a GREAT idea.
Wait a minute. We tried that and it failed miserably didn’t it?
Never mind.
I’m with JohnT: It’s the culture not the price. There are lots of places where booze is cheap and plentiful that have fewer problems with it than elsewhere where it may be more expensive and/or restricted. I think that we have a particularly bizarre cultural relationship with it, though I am not sure why.
that was a long-ass blog
Um, Hey Radley, you BIG PANSY-ASS SQUISH! Oh, oh, so, taxes on alcohol are bad? Well, no shit. ALL TAXES ARE THEFT!
Another policy wonk (…ah, how to phrase this?) seasoning the soup isn’t even worthy of comment, except for the fact that this particular one is capable of doing so much better.
Come on, Radley! Suit up! The revolution is upon us! Why waste your time arguing about the effectiveness of taxes to control behavior, when we know that all taxes are theft? Nuanced, civilized debate has no place here! Instead, we must react to any and every statist argument with extremist, purely-principled, all-or-nothing calls for revolution! There is no room for debate!
Ha. Ha. Ha.*
*Sorry, Radley, I couldn’t help myself. Though, I’m sure JT Kennedy or Mr. Sabotta is dreaming up some sort of obsessive retort as we speak. Wheee!
Yeah, when I was 17, and my friends and I were lookin for some booze, the first thing on our minds was the fucking measly excise tax.
“Awww, man, I’m gettin FUCKED UP to-NIGHT, bruh!”
“Oh, shit, dude! Check it out! New excise taxes on the drink! Now, instead of that MD 20/20 costing us $3.15, it’s gonna cost us $3.50! Damn. Looks like it’s back to Sunny-D, boys. No binge-drinkin’ tonight.”
Sometimes, it’s like certain people were never really teenagers themselves.
And then, we see Mr. Leitzel posting on here, talking about how his main concern was with lowering the number of drunk drivers.
Let me get this straight. So, somehow, adding a few cents to the cost of a beer is more dissuasive than the spectre of spending a night in prison, getting your license revoked, paying thousands in court and legal fees, having to go through counseling & AA, and/or having to start your car with a breathlyzer? What the hell?
Again, I don’t think Mr. Leitzel has thought this through on the common-sense approach side. Look, if someone is reckless enough to risk all those threats that I just listed, then do you really think that a measly few extra cents is going to have any effect? Oh, FUCK no! In fact, I would argue that, the drunker you get, the less you care about the price of things. Oh, we all know the feeling. Waking up the morning after a good bar-hopping time, and pulling a ball of crinkled credit card receipts from your stinky smoke-encrusted jeans, and BAM, your jaw hits the floor when you realize that you gave that cute little blonde waitress a $30 tip.
I’m terribly sorry, Jim, but when you’re drunk enough to actually be a threat on the road, the last thing you’re worried about is an extra few cents on top of the already-high bar markup on alcohol.
Which brings me to another point. You go out to a bar, you pay, what, $4 or $5 for a bottle of Budweiser? That’s a HUGE markup. But people still pay it, right? So, if they’re willing to pay that huge bar markup, do you really think that an extra few cents will have any effect? Most people probably wouldn’t even notice!
As far as how the tax increase will effect teen drinking, I was just remembering my teen drinking days. Usually, we would find an older guy (like 21) to buy us some beer. Invariably, said older guy would charge a service fee for himself for his time and effort of procuring the booze. With that in mind, I remember generally giving the guy a $20 for a 6-pack, and him keeping the change. Teens are already well-prepared to overspend to get a taste of the forbiden alcohol. And when I turned 21, I did the same thing to the younger college classmate as well.
More on Alcohol Taxation
My initial Overlawyered guest post calling for higher excise taxes on alcohol in the US motivated a particularly thoughtful and lengthy reply from Radley Balko over at The Agitator, and his post has been followed by a fair number of…
Though I imagine that I will regret it, I did put up a bit of a reply over at Overlawyered:
http://www.overlawyered.com/archives/001332.html
I find it mildly amusing that the person who advocates higher alcohol taxes is faculty at a university where the unofficial motto is “Where Fun Comes to Die.”
If Leitzel wants to raise alcohol taxes it’s going to have a much wider economic impact than he predicts. Bars are greedy places, and owners would gladly use the excuse of a marginally higher tax to jack up prices, then blame the government. Ill-informed patrons (sadly, probably a majority) have a choice to make: shell out for the extra cost, or stop attending bars as often. If alcohol consumption moves to a merely periodic event due to higher bar tabs, bars will close, which costs jobs, particularly those of young people who tend to drink more. If watering holes become scarce or prohibitively costly, drinking will move away from a scrutinized, regulated industry and into private homes, where there are no bouncers to kick out troublemakers and check IDs. The alcohol industry as a whole may not feel a direct impact, but the alcohol conveyance industry (and those who supply it) definitely would.
“If booze is more expensive, people will consume smaller amounts of liquid. Not get less drunk. In fact, they well probably get more drunk.
Taxed alcohol makes hard liquor more cost effective. To get to the desired level of inebriation, beer and wine will have diminishing bang for the buck.”
I think the experience of the sundry Scandinavian countries, where booze is exhorbitant and alcoholism rampant, would tend to illustrate this nicely. Beer wasn’t even LEGAL at all in Iceland until 1989.
I drink, therefore I am. heh
On another level- Sin taxes create crime.
As a former teen *girl*, I can say unequivocably that this will not impact female teen drinking.
We don’t have to pay for our alcohol. There’s always a guy who’ll buy it.
I just read Leitzel’s response.
First, he links to a PDF of a 14-page study which he says proves that taxation decreases drinking and related auto accidents. I read the conclusion to the paper. It said, “The weight of the evidence suggests that the effects are relatively modest, with a 1-percent increase in price expected to lead to less than a 1-percent decrease in consumption.” Not exactly damning evidence. It also said, “Young adults are at special risk for alcohol-related problems. While there is evidence that increases in alcohol prices or taxes reduce youth drinking, one study found that this effect may not hold for binge drinking among college students.” Again, very wishy-washy.
But the worst was yet to come. In Leitzel’s next paragraph, he talks about “internalizing” the external costs of alcohol use via excise taxation. It took a couple of reads to really grasp his point, but I think I see it now. He feels that alcohol use has the external cost of drunk driving accidents. And the fact that all taxpayers, not just drinkers, are forced to pay these external costs, then it is, in effect, a subsidy for drinkers. Thus, if we hike the tax on drinkers, then we localize the costs to the people who are most likely to create the costs: the drinkers. Thus, it’s more of a usage-fee than a traditional tax.
Sorry, not gonna buy that line. The logic just doesn’t follow through. Responsible behavior, with anything in life, is part of your character sum. It varies from person to person, regardless of the behavior that one is engaging in. Simply because I consume a glass of beer does not automatically lump me in with a category of irresponsible people. I find many, many problems with enacting a “usage-fee” on anyone who engages in a certain activity, simply because a miniscule percentage of those people do so irresponsibly.
And using the old argument of “well, our society is socialized, therefore, taxpayers are forced to pay for the costs of drunk driving anyway, therefore, we need MORE socialization to offset it” doesn’t fly either. Yes, because our country has been largely socialized, if there is a massive accident resulting from a drunk driving incident, then the whole of taxpayers bear the financial load for it. But this aggression, this theft, at the hands of the State, should not beget even more theft, no matter how localized you make it. This new theft will not result in lower taxes in other arenas, you can be sure of that. So this is not, as Jim says, going to “enhance the working of the market”. The nature of the beaurocracy is not of that manner. If you cut costs in one arena, it simply expands its tendrils in other arenas. It never gives back, it never loosens its grip. No matter how much you try to localize external costs, the only way to truly do so is to end the state aggression against its citizens. And one act of theft is no excuse for another.
I see what Jim was trying to get at, but again, I just don’t buy that line, in the greater scheme. He’s trying to back away from the “behavior modification via taxation” principle, and instead, use it as a sort of “shifting the burden to those more likely to cause it” thing.
But Mr. Leitzel’s proposal is shaky, at best, and all one needs to do is look at the reality, look at the Washington Post article from yesterday about the horrible effects of DUI convictions on people’s lives. There was a woman on there who never drinks. She had one single cognac & coke, and had a .09, went through a yellow light, and ended up in prison. Meanwhile, I personally drink quite a bit. Not binge, not quantity, but quality. In other words, I SPEND quite a bit on alcohol. Good craft/artisan beers, quality wine. And I am perfectly responsible with my consumption. But, with Mr. Leitzel, we are lumped into the same category. One woman, who never drinks, and therefore, pays very, very little into the “usage fee” tax pool, but she is irresponsible, and much more likely than I am to incur the costs of drunk driving. I, on the other hand, would be paying quite a bit into Jim’s proposed “usage fee” tax pool. Yet, I do not contribute to the risk, to the costs, and I am not likely to. And that is the biggest problem with Jim’s proposition. His “internalization” of costs related to drunk driving are no more rational than taxing everyone who owns a gun because a minute few people use them to kill.
Nice try, though.
Get ready!!!! This country is on the verge of electing two trial lawyers to the highest office in the world and one of them is the king of class action suits and by the way these two fellows have recieved millions and millions from the trial lawyers in this country who expect to be rewarded after the election and they will be. Rest assured that alcohol is very much on their radar screen and like cigarettes its an easy target. If your really interested take a look at how the cogarette settlement was divided up and who got the lions share of the billions that were awarded. Have no fear, alcohol will be around for a long time, after all the folks who protect us from such things really don`t want it to go away.