Tax on alcohol could save lives

By Judy Ann Wilcox | Sunday, May 27, 2007

I would like to voice my opinion about cigarettes and drunk driving. Cigarettes do not instantly kill people like alcohol does. It takes years for cigarettes or secondhand smoke to kill, and smoking mostly kills only the smoker.

Alcohol is dangerous to everyone when a drunk gets behind the wheel. My doctor’s parents were killed just a few years ago by a drunk driver with his two kids ages five and seven in his truck. All five people were killed instantly.

So, in my opinion, every alcoholic drink sold should have a $1 state tax put on it and every can of beer sold should have a $1 state tax put on it. Think of the lives that would be saved if the state would tax alcohol the way they did every pack of cigarettes.

Every 31 minutes someone in the U.S. dies in an alcohol related crash, according to the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC). That is approximately 17,000 deaths in crashes involving alcohol or about 39 percent of all traffic deaths. Someone is injured every two minutes in an alcohol related crash which adds up to more than 250,000 injuries a year. This is all a fact!

I hope the public will support a $1 tax on every beer and alcoholic drink sold. It would save more lives and medical care than the cost of cigarettes. Smokers do not crash into innocent people and kill them. Drunks do!

Judy Ann Wilcox

Davenport