NY Daily News
The Health Department is mulling a new tax increase on alcohol – which supporters say would make New Yorkers drink less and get healthier.
“It’s one of the things on the menu,” said Executive Deputy Commissioner Adam Karpati, who oversees the Health Department’s alcohol policy.
And it could put a big siphon on a party budget.
Under one scenario, a bottle of Bud would skyrocket as much as 10 cents – taking the fun out of happy hour.
That plan would bump the total tax on a beer to more than 17 cents, a steep fee on a $2 longneck, while a bottle of Cabernet would climb up to nearly 50 cents.
New Yorkers pony up 7.4 cents of taxes on a bottle of beer, 36.9 cents on a bottle of wine and $3.61 on a standard 750-ml bottle of hard liquor.
The state raked in $206 million off alcohol last year – and that was before Gov. Paterson increased wine and beer taxes to help balance the state budget.
The city taxes only beer and liquor, not wine, raising $23.5 million.
Mayor Bloomberg hasn’t weighed in on the idea. But he is a big fan of raising taxes on cigarettes and sugary sodas to improve health – so higher booze taxes would fit right in.
“The surest pathway to changing behavior is through the wallet,” Bloomberg said last month.
Former Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden was working on the idea before President Obama picked him to head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Columbia University’s Joseph Califano.
“It’s a terrific idea,” said Califano, president of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse.
“This has the potential to be one of the most significant things that Bloomberg can do in terms of the public health.”
Frieden was replaced by Commissioner Thomas Farley, who wrote in 2005 that “the simplest and single most effective step we could take to cut drinking is to raise prices by taxing alcohol more.”
The city counted 1,700 alcohol-related deaths in 2008, and wants to reduce high school drinking by 16% and booze-fueled hospitalizations 19% by 2012.
“We need to be doing more around alcohol. This is a reasonable thing to consider,” Karpati said. Any city increase would need approval from state lawmakers in Albany.
The Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York called for the 10-cents-per-drink hike in alcohol taxes, which would flood $500 million a year into tax coffers.
Its not the governments job to tell us to be healthy, when NY can run a balanced budget for 10 years then maybe they will have a leg to stand on! If people want to drink regularly that is their RIGHT same with eating fatty foods, what we do with our life is our RIGHT, but it seems these Neo-Marxist Progressives confuse commodities like Health Insurance as Rights, and what we do with out lives as the role of the General Welfare!
everyones still ganna drink just make it more expensive not helping anybody
Or it might lead more people to distill their own booze.
not in purim season
Or it might lead more people to distill their own booze.
what a good idea. mashkah is another word for alcohol. Higher the taxes the better. One can frabreng and be happy with out drinking maskah.
Big deal… where there is a will there will be a way!!!
If this was done in Iowa for example or any other state where the people who believe it is a huge mitzvah and what chassidishkeit is all about, would simply drive across state borders to purchase as much mashke as their hearts desire at the reduced price, in order to continue “farbrenging”!
They’ll do the same in NY! Enough people travel to and from NJ daily to bring the stuff in at the cheaper rate!