Published July 1997 — Download PDF of the original newspaper column
Byrd's-Eye View By U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd Stuck with the Tab for the Alcohol Industry
According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), more Americans use alcohol than any other drug, and the results are devastating. It is estimated that 69.3 percent of children between the ages of 16 and 17 have, at one point in their lifetime, experimented with alcohol. Consider, on the other hand, that 26.1 percent of children in the same age group have tried marijuana and 5.3 percent have tried cocaine, drugs that receive a great deal of publicity and attention from government and the media. Meanwhile, the dangers of alcohol are essentially ignored. Such alarming statistics recently led me to introduce an amendment in the Senate aimed at eliminating the tax deduction for alcoholic beverage advertising expenditures and directing the resultant savings toward increased funding for education and alcohol-abuse prevention programs that are targeted at our nation's youth. Elimination of the deduction for alcohol advertising expenditures is not, as some might call it, the introduction of a "sin tax," but rather an end to a "sin subsidy" that has left American taxpayers subsidizing alcohol advertising and picking up the tab for the high costs imposed on society by alcohol consumption. Alcohol abuse and alcoholism cause more than 100,000 deaths each year in the U.S., and cost society approximately $100 billion annually. Our children are besieged with media messages that create the impression that alcohol can help to solve life's problems, lead to popularity, and enhance athletic skills. These messages are distortions that gloss over the all too prevalent and detrimental results of alcohol consumption -the loss of productivity due to hangovers, the tragic deaths and injuries caused by drunk drivers, the hospital admissions for alcohol poisoning, the sad effects of cirrhosis of the liver, and the families torn apart by alcohol abuse. My amendment would have devoted much of the savings from closing the tax loophole to a far-reaching counter-advertisement campaign to educate youth about the dangers of alcohol consumption. If we are truly concerned about drug abuse in this nation, we should not allow the alcohol industry's enticing and unrealistic messages to flow unchallenged. This serious issue deserves greater attention, and although my amendment was defeated on the Senate Floor, I hope that it may have helped to focus the spotlight on the dangers of alcohol and its cost to our nation and our nation's greatest treasure -- our young people. July 16, 1997