Beall Won't Give on Alcohol Fees

When I heard that Assemblyman Jim Beall's proposed 10-cent-a-drink alcohol fee was crushed in committee like a vat of grapes, I called to urge him not to give up the fight. Standing up to California's powerful wine, beer and spirits industries is a thankless job, but someone has to do it.

Even those of us who enjoy a nice glass of wine with dinner or a beer while watching a football game understand the toll that alcohol abuse takes. We see it every day in traffic fatalities, domestic violence, job losses, gang rapes, broken families. Our prisons, jails, divorce courts and emergency rooms are filled with people who didn't know when to say when.

Statewide estimates of the cost of alcohol abuse range from $22.5 billion to $38 billion a year. Beall's fee would have offset that only a bit, generating $1.4 billion a year for treatment programs, law enforcement and other alcohol-related costs.

When someone asks imbibers to fork over an additional dime every time we fill our glasses to ease the societal burden that drinking brings, it's hard to refuse. I mean, why shouldn't we pay? We tax smokers for the cost of treating tobacco-related illness.