You remember the 2011 campaign to enact a higher alcohol tax in Maryland, don’t you? The state was blanketed with the message that raising the tax on alcohol would help reduce deaths, keep kids away from drink, and make our state healthier. Oh, and in addition, the money would go to something good – services for people with disabilities. As it turns out, the money seemed to be more important than the public health good.

At the Alcohol Policy 16 Conference, held recently in Arlington, neo-Prohibitionists gathered to discuss alcohol policy. One of the tools they talked about using to combat drinking is alcohol taxes. Maryland’s successful campaign to raise its alcohol tax was part of the discussion. Apparently putting together a diverse coalition to pressure lawmakers and “educate” the public was presented as a fine strategy.

As Angela Logomasini reports, it seems that this coalition was motivated by money first and foremost:

Rebecca Ramirez of the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University presented her qualitative research on the framing of pro-tax messaging for use in lobbying campaigns. It included interviews with policymakers and activists involved in these campaigns.  Ramirez’s discussion eventually turned to earmarking, which is apparently the key reason many groups are involved.  Officials with one disability advocacy group, she noted, told her flat out they simply didn’t care about the public health impacts of taxes.  They were in the game solely to get some of the tax revenue steered toward their organization.

This really isn’t much of surprise. Much of the alcohol tax campaign was focused on using the money for people with disabilities.  Organizations that provide services to people with disabilities were strong backers of the law. What wasn’t really stressed in 2011 was that this new tax reveue would have meant a lot more money for their individual organizations. The state does not have many programs that provide direct cash payments to people with disabilities, after all. It does, however, have plenty of programs that provide payments to disability organizations.

It certainly makes sense for these organizations to push for a dedicated funding stream, regardless of source. Noting that they don’t really care about the public health benefit of the tax doesn’t really make them look good, however. The whole point of targeting alcohol is because it supposedly costs the state money to take care of sick drinkers and people harmed by alcohol. This tax was never simply presented as a way to funnel money to disability service organizations.

I have no problem with funding disability services or with excise taxes on products that impose a public harm. However, I do have a problem with excise taxes that are levied on unpopular products in order to pay for government services that benefit all of us.

The last laugh was really on these disability service organizations, however. They were used by the alcohol tax advocates to advance the argument right up until the final days of the 2011 legislative session. Then lobbyist Vinny DeMarco and others left them in the lurch by agreeing to support a tax hike that only gave a pittance to disability services.

Regardless of how these organizations were shafted in 2011, we can probably expect a similar tactic to be tried in future years. I’m certain that we’ll see a push for a hike in the tobacco tax or alcohol tax, or maybe a new tax on sugar-sweetened drinks, next year or the year after. When we see a coalition of groups pushing for this tax hike, let’s remember to ask them how much their payoff will be.