The forward-thinking, life-saving Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board
After Sweden went the other way - reverting from commercial beer sales to a state-controlled system - alcohol-related hospitalizations, suicides, and motor vehicle crashes all declined.
The forward-thinking, life-saving Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board
Jonathan Purtle, Doctoral candidate in public health. Works at Drexel's Center for Nonviolence and Social Justice
By Jonathan Purtle
Getting booze in Pennsylvania is a hassle. You can’t buy it at the supermarket. If you want beer, you can’t buy less than a case from the distributor. If it’s wine or liquor you desire, you have to go to a separate store entirely — often to be met with high prices and long lines. Most states don’t operate this way but Pennsylvania has since 1933, when the heavy-handed, state-run system was established to suppress alcohol consumption in the wake of the 21st Amendment and prohibition reform.
Irksome as the current system is, and illogical as it may seem, the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (aka “state stores”) might be a public health blessing in disguise—something that state lawmakers should consider as they contemplate the recent proposal by House Majority Leader Mike Turzai (R., Allegheny) to privatize and revamp the state’s alcohol control system.
Earlier this year, the effects of privatizing alcohol sales were assessed by the Community Preventive Services Task Force — an independent body whose members, appointed by the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are charged with making evidence-based recommendations about what programs and policies keep people healthy. The task force, which was not focusing on any particular state, reviewed the results of 17 studies. It recommended against the privatization of alcohol sales based on the “strong evidence that privatization results in increased per capita alcohol consumption, a well-established proxy for excessive consumption.” In most states that would mean a controversial and politically difficult reversal of current policy. Pennsylvania is ahead of the curve.
The task force’s review, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, found that privatization resulted in a median increase in alcohol sales of 44 percent after municipalities underwent privatization. One of the studies that was included, an exhaustive analysis of drinking policies in Nordic countries, found that alcohol-related hospitalizations, suicides, and motor vehicle crashes all declined after Sweden reverted back to a state-controlled system of retail beer sales.
Excessive alcohol consumption is responsible for approximately 79,000 deaths annually in the United States and costs the nation an estimated $223.5 billion in lost productivity, health care, and criminal justice costs — with state governments bearing around $53.5 billion of the financial burden. These figures don’t even begin to account for the social costs of excessive alcohol consumption among children and families.
Turzai has estimated that his proposal would generate $1.9 billion in state revenue. Others say it would bring in less. Either way, would it be sufficient to counter the public health costs of privatization?
As Gifford Pinchot, who is best known as the father of American conservation, said while serving as governor of Pennsylvania in 1933, the state’s alcohol control system was designed to "discourage the purchase of alcoholic beverages by making it as inconvenient and expensive as possible.” While the current system wasn’t informed by the recommendations of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, it is aligned with them.
From a public health perspective, Pennsylvania has a good thing going — and shouldn’t throw it away as a short-term solution to our fiscal woes.
Read more about The Public's Health.
If all the good intentioned forward thinkers had to go through an LCB type system just to get one of their children into each one of the required classes each term of the school year, there'd not only be blood in the streets, there be howls of meanness directed towards anyone who wanted to maintain such a system. You folks don't have to use the LCB system, just get out of the way of those of us that do and despise it.— axxell- WTF? The government should make life more difficult for the great majority of us who drink responsibly because it has a theory that some people might drink more if booze was available at Safeway? This is why we must get rid of every elected Democrat. I NEITHER NEED, NOR WANT, THE NANNY STATE TO TELL ME HOW TO LIVE MY LIFE! Privatize now, privatize fully. The sooner we do it, the sooner we lower our pension liability.
Wine, beer, and liquor should be available at private stores, and grocery stores, and convenience stores, run by private companies, who cater to my private preferences.— WizardofBoz - Oh, as to the loss of revenue, that's a non-issue. There's a tax on every case, six pack, and bottle sold, there are liquor license fees, and there is the huge reduction in payroll costs and pension costs for state employees when you privatize.
— WizardofBoz - Did the Inky find every nanny state supporter in Pa and give them jobs as journalists?— sadim
- And then...replace PennDot with 14 trucks and 36 people with dirty hands— gogoruch
- Sales will go up in PA because folks won't have to go to MD, NJ, NY or WV for reasonably priced product.— 2ndNlong
