Tax On Alcohol Could Save Lives Says New Study – A recent study done by the University of Florida has found that raising taxes on alcohol may help to ease problem drinking. Drinking is a major health and social problem, as the diseases and illness caused by drinking range from mental issues to liver and problems with other organs.
According to the study, a rise on alcohol taxes would result in 35% reduction in alcohol related deaths, 11 percent reduction in traffic crash deaths, a 6 percent reduction in sexually transmitted diseases, a 2 percent reduction in violence and a 1.4 percent reduction in crime.
The findings “clearly show increasing the price of alcohol will result in significant reductions in many of the undesirable outcomes associated with drinking,” lead author Alexander C. Wagenaar, a professor of health outcomes and policy at the University of Florida College of Medicine, said in a news release from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
“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,” Wagenaar added.
This plan, however, has been used in other countries where it failed to make an impact on alcohol related deaths and other social problems. It has been tried in countries like Australia, where the raise in taxes affected the poorer of the population, which didn’t stop or cut down their drinking, instead it was just seen as a tax grab for the government.