SANTA FE \u2013 New Mexico has the worst rate in the nation for alcohol-related deaths at nearly 2,000 people per year and some lawmakers are debating whether the state tax on booze should be higher.<\/p>\n
The Santa Fe New Mexican reports the Legislative Health and Human Services Committee has chosen an alcohol tax increase as one of its top priorities for next year.<\/p>\n
But some lawmakers don\u2019t know how much to increase the alcohol tax, whether to change how the taxes are levied and what to do with the revenues raised.<\/p>\n
New Mexico taxes alcohol wholesalers a fixed amount per volume of beverage they sell to retailers, who raise prices on consumers to cover the upcharge.<\/p>\n
Experts say higher taxes reduce some of alcohol\u2019s harmful impacts by making it more expensive to drink excessively.<\/p>\n
Alcohol taxes also raise revenue that can fund prevention and treatment services.<\/p>\n
But the New Mexican reports that the state\u2019s rates don\u2019t adjust as inflation pushes up alcohol\u2019s prices and legislators rarely tinker with them.<\/p>\n
The current rates \u2014 7 cents per drink for wine and spirits and 4 cents a drink for beer \u2014 are at historic lows, according to the newspaper.<\/p>\n
The last time advocates in New Mexico attempted to raise alcohol taxes, they campaigned in 2017 for an across-the-board, quarter-a-drink increase and the bill flopped.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone needs to understand the landscape before we have a serious conversation about how it should be changed,\u201d Rep. Christine Chandler, who chairs the state legislature\u2019s Revenue Stabilization and Tax Policy Committee, told the New Mexican.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
FE \u2013 New Mexico has the worst rate in the nation for alcohol-related deaths at nearly 2,000 people per year and some lawmakers are debating whether the state tax on booze should be higher. The Santa Fe New Mexican reports the Legislative Health and Human Services Committee has chosen an alcohol tax increase as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[924],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-38099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-alcohol"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38099"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83914,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38099\/revisions\/83914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38099"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=38099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}