Make Boozers Buy Round for Victims

Re “Defender of Beer Drinkers Rejects the Redneck Image (May 24)”: Dana Parsons’ column about Beer Drinkers of America brings up an interesting subject.

BDA and the alcohol industry would like to be pictured as responsible, and that they are! Responsible for: 25,000 auto deaths annually; 650,000 auto crash injuries every year; being the No. 1 cause of all highway deaths; the No. 1 cause of emergency room cases; the No. 1 killer of all people under 35; the No. 1 drug of choice of high school kids and their No. 1 path into use of other drugs; 5,000 babies born with alcohol-caused birth defects annually in California alone, etc.

Here in Orange County, voters were recently asked to vote ourselves a healthy sales tax to pay for a jail. When you think about it, they wanted to tax the wrong people! Because about half of all the people brought to Orange County jail are there for alcohol-related reasons, and as many as 95% of all the cases that come before municipal courts involve alcohol and drugs, it is only logical that drinkers and the industry should bear most of any tax burden for jails and courts!

The reason they aren’t taxed for their costs is because the beer and other alcohol industries buy the state Legislature every year with “campaign contributions.” They make sure we pay the costs, not the drinkers. California ranks third from the lowest in the nation in its tax on beer; California’s tax on wine is the lowest in the nation and, incredibly, hasn’t been raised in more than 50 years!

BDA claims others’ moral values are being thrust upon them. But that is not the point. The point is there are enormous costs and enormous human suffering associated with the irresponsibility of alcohol drinkers and the industry. Therefore, they should pay for the specific monetary losses to individuals, to governments and to industry.

And they should pay punitive damages every time there is alcohol-related injury or loss to life. Payments couldn’t bring back life, but the money would at least partially compensate for some of the suffering by the injured and by the families of those killed or disabled by alcohol.

JACK MILLER, Tustin