{"id":3833,"date":"2024-02-06T05:05:48","date_gmt":"2024-02-06T05:05:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cnsdrive.com\/alcoholjustice\/?p=3833"},"modified":"2024-07-08T22:10:08","modified_gmt":"2024-07-08T22:10:08","slug":"the-value-of-californias-alcohol-tax-is-the-value-of-its-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cnsdrive.com\/alcoholjustice\/blog\/the-value-of-californias-alcohol-tax-is-the-value-of-its-students\/","title":{"rendered":"The Value of California&#8217;s Alcohol Tax Is the Value of Its Students"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t<div data-elementor-type=\"wp-post\" data-elementor-id=\"3833\" class=\"elementor elementor-3833\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-4bd79ba e-flex e-con-boxed e-con e-parent\" data-id=\"4bd79ba\" data-element_type=\"container\" data-core-v316-plus=\"true\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"e-con-inner\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-79d4a92 elementor-widget elementor-widget-text-editor\" data-id=\"79d4a92\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"text-editor.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t<style>\/*! elementor - v3.20.0 - 10-04-2024 *\/\n.elementor-widget-text-editor.elementor-drop-cap-view-stacked .elementor-drop-cap{background-color:#69727d;color:#fff}.elementor-widget-text-editor.elementor-drop-cap-view-framed .elementor-drop-cap{color:#69727d;border:3px solid;background-color:transparent}.elementor-widget-text-editor:not(.elementor-drop-cap-view-default) .elementor-drop-cap{margin-top:8px}.elementor-widget-text-editor:not(.elementor-drop-cap-view-default) .elementor-drop-cap-letter{width:1em;height:1em}.elementor-widget-text-editor .elementor-drop-cap{float:left;text-align:center;line-height:1;font-size:50px}.elementor-widget-text-editor .elementor-drop-cap-letter{display:inline-block}<\/style>\t\t\t\t<p>Students of the California State University (CSU) system keep finding themselves pieces in Sacramento\u2019s bleak budgetary chess. Last year,<a href=\"https:\/\/leginfo.legislature.ca.gov\/faces\/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240AB840\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u00a0the legislature passed AB 840<\/a>, which closed revenue holes by handing Big Alcohol carte blanche to market directly to underage undergraduates. To follow that up, California Governor Gavin Newsom\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/calmatters.org\/politics\/2024\/01\/california-budget-lao-review-newsom\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">clawed back $499 million from the system to balance the 2024 budget<\/a>.<\/p><p>The solution for both\u2014one that neither kicks needed funding down the road, nor increases risks of academic failure and physical harm to students\u2014comes from a simple, popular, yet apparently perversely unthinkable policy: ask the alcohol industry to pay the bare, fair minimum.<\/p><p>California\u2019s taxes on alcohol producers are not a percentage of sales. Instead, they are set at a fixed dollar amount per quantity produced. This means that every year, it becomes cheaper and cheaper to be a producer in California, and that does not take into account federal alcohol tax cuts. Since California last established new rates in 1992, the alcohol excise tax has lost 55% of its value. In 2022, the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cdtfa.ca.gov\/DataPortal\/dataset.htm?url=AlcohBevABTBWDSpExTax\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">California Department of Tax and Fee Administration reported approximately $429 million in revenue<\/a>. However, had the excise tax value kept up with inflation, the expected take would have been $952 million\u2014an additional $523 million just from normalizing the current tax rate.<\/p><p>That half a billion would fill the CSU budget hole, with a little change left over to fund programs and remove any ostensible need to sell student eyes to the industry. More importantly, it would modernize an alcohol tax that was last addressed during the first Bush administration.<\/p><p>This is more than just a pleasing symmetry. Not only are 40% of CSU students underage, but alcohol-related incidents are the leading causes of mortality for that age group. As of 2014,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.jsad.com\/doi\/abs\/10.15288\/jsad.2017.78.540\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">over 4,100 college-age young adults died annually of alcohol-related injury, including 2,614 from motor vehicle crashes<\/a>. As for the other three acute causes of death, homicide and suicide are both strongly related to alcohol overconsumption, and alcohol greatly increases respiratory depression\u2014and therefore overdose\u2014from opioid use. On top of that,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC3908712\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">heavy and binge drinking patterns are associated with a number of negative academic consequences<\/a>\u2014and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/osrr.calpoly.edu\/alcohol-policy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">underage alcohol use can get students punished by the school itself<\/a>.<\/p><p>There are a number of environmental interventions that can bring these numbers back down, but one of the most forthright ones are, again, alcohol taxes. By moderately raising the typical price of a drink, alcohol tax hikes affect people involved in the most dangerous drinking problems, particularly cash-strapped heavy drinkers\u2014which perfectly describes the college students in the crosshairs of CSU\u2019s bottle-pushing strategy.<\/p><p>This will not be the last time California is faced with brutal budgetary tradeoffs. Even a moderate hike in the alcohol excise tax can improve health in the short term, raise funds in the medium term, and let more compassionate heads in the legislature avoid mercenary lawmaking in the long term.<\/p><p><a class=\"btn-2\" href=\"https:\/\/cnsdrive.com\/alcoholjustice\/doghouses\/the-cruel-trade-with-ab-840-big-alcohol-buys-underage-eyes\/\">READ MORE<\/a> &#8211; about 2023\u2019s AB 840<\/p><p><a class=\"btn-2\" href=\"https:\/\/alcoholjustice.org\/images\/media\/press%20releases\/4-24-23_CA-Excise-Tax_PR_FINAL.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">READ MORE<\/a> &#8211; about closing budget holes with alcohol taxes<\/p><p><a class=\"btn-2\" href=\"https:\/\/cnsdrive.com\/alcoholjustice\/advocacy-resources\/take-action\/bring-the-california-alcohol-excise-tax-into-the-21st-century-to-protect-college-students\/\">TAKE ACTION<\/a>\u00a0to tell Gov. Newsom to include a cost-of-living alcohol excise tax increase in the May budget revise.\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Students of the California State University (CSU) system keep finding themselves pieces in Sacramento\u2019s bleak budgetary chess. Last year,\u00a0the legislature passed AB 840, which closed revenue holes by handing Big Alcohol carte blanche to market directly to underage undergraduates. To follow that up, California Governor Gavin Newsom\u00a0clawed back $499 million from the system to balance&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/cnsdrive.com\/alcoholjustice\/blog\/the-value-of-californias-alcohol-tax-is-the-value-of-its-students\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Value of California&#8217;s Alcohol Tax Is the Value of Its Students<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3834,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cnsdrive.com\/alcoholjustice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cnsdrive.com\/alcoholjustice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cnsdrive.com\/alcoholjustice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cnsdrive.com\/alcoholjustice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cnsdrive.com\/alcoholjustice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3833"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/cnsdrive.com\/alcoholjustice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8158,"href":"https:\/\/cnsdrive.com\/alcoholjustice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3833\/revisions\/8158"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cnsdrive.com\/alcoholjustice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cnsdrive.com\/alcoholjustice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cnsdrive.com\/alcoholjustice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cnsdrive.com\/alcoholjustice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}