AB 1019: California Alcohol Tax Bill Put on Hold April 29, 2009
Posted by Ernesto in : Alcohol, Recovery, Substance Abuse, United States , trackback
The California state government was set to enact Bill 1019, which would have proposed a fee on alcohol companies in order to allocate collected funds of approximately $1.4 billion to programs that help Californians alleviate alcohol-related harm, such as car accidents, deaths, illnesses, injuries, and crime (domestic violence).
Democrat Assemblyman Jim Beall, Jr. from San Jose, the author of AB
1019 (Alcohol Related Services Act), recently said: “The industry must start paying its fair share for the problems their products cause. If this fee and the program it pays for prevents another child from being born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome or prevents another senseless DUI fatality it will have paid for itself and more.”
The kinds of programs that AB 1019 was originally designed to fund were in the five areas most impacted: alcohol treatment, alcohol prevention, hospitalization, trauma care, and law enforcement. Most Californians seemed to be in agreement with Jim Beall, Jr. that the proposed $1.4 billion that would have been collected would have paled in comparison to the estimated $38.4 billion dollars in damages that the alcohol industries’ products cause yearly in the state.
The “Regulatory Mitigation Fee” (Tax), AB 1019, originally called for the following breakdown: An increase of $1.07 per gallon of beer; $2.56 per gallon of wine containing 14 percent alcohol or less; $4.27 per gallon of wine and hard cider containing more than 14 percent alcohol; and $8.53 per gallon of 80-proof-liqour.
Roughly, the fees would have broken down to about a dime per drink (12-ounce serving of beer, 1.5 ounces of 80-proof-liquor, or a 5 ounce glass of wine). The fee was to be assed directly by the manufactures that distribute the alcohol. However, it remained unknown whether retailers would have passed the heightened cost for alcohol products onto consumers.
Nonetheless, the California state government announced that AB 1019 (Alcohol-Related Services Act of 2009) had been revised by its author Jim Beall, Jr. and turned into a two-year bill for discussion next year.
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