TREATMENT GETS LITTLE HELP FROM LIQUOR SALES

If you need help kicking a cigarette habit in Pennsylvania, there's $31
million in tobacco lawsuit settlement money earmarked for that purpose this
year.

When the state's first casinos open, the owners must have a plan for
spotting and referring compulsive gamblers to treatment, and they must
prominently post signs displaying a help hotline number.

If you're a problem drinker, though, help isn't nearly so well funded or so
visible.

Last year, liquor and wine sales brought in nearly $200 million in tax
revenue from the 18 percent tax on wine and liquor. But only about $2
million of that is designated for treating problem drinkers.

Pennsylvania's 8 cents per gallon tax on beer, meanwhile, is the fourth
lowest in America and has been unchanged since 1947. If legislators doubled
the rate this fall, the state would still be below the national average.
All of that money goes into the state's general fund.

At a time when the state seems to be pushing alcohol with expanded Sunday
sales -- liquor sales increased 7 percent for the second consecutive year
last year -- should Pennsylvania be using more alcohol tax proceeds to
treat problem drinkers?

For George Hacker, director of the Alcohol Policies Project of the
Washington, D.C.-based Center for Science in the Public Interest, the
answer is obvious.

"All you have to do is look at the tremendous disparity between the social
costs brought on by the consumption of alcohol and the relatively piddling
amount of revenue that is brought in for the sale" of liquor, wine and
beer, Hacker said.

"It's probably 10 to 1."

Hacker said Pennsylvania's beer tax, in particular, amounts to a steady
price cut for beer over the more than five decades it's remained unchanged,
longer than in any other state.

"One dollar in 1947 is probably worth at best 5-10 cents today," he said.
"The failure to adjust the tax for inflation has robbed the treasury of
hundreds of millions of dollars in potential revenue."

Some of which, Hacker suggested, could have gone to help problem drinkers.

It is the wine and liquor tax, though, that has drawn recent legislative
attention.

State Senators Pat Vance, R-Cumberland, and Jay Costa Jr., D-Forest Hills,
have introduced a bill to redirect most of the money to state-funded drug
and alcohol treatment programs.

The bill would impose no new taxes, but 75 percent of future new revenue
would go to those programs as well.

The idea, said Vance, is to switch the funding source from the general fund
to a dedicated allocation based on liquor sales. The idea got started in
2003 when the general fund allocation was drastically cut in the
preliminary 2003-04 budget.

That experience, Vance said, "showed everyone just how really vulnerable
this funding was, and it made people stop to think about the consequences
of not treating drug and alcohol addictions."

While she sees "a kind of poetic justice" in using the liquor tax to fund
drug and alcohol rehabilitation, she acknowledged that the cause is a tough
sell. "There are so many people who think, 'It's their fault, and why
should we be doing something for them?' " Even for the long-untouched beer
tax, Vance said, "I'm not sure the legislative will is there" to raise it.

Another Republican, Rep. Gene DiGirolamo of Bucks County, fought the $2.9
million cut in drug and alcohol spending this year and pushed for an
additional $5 million.

That effort fell short, but DiGirolamo promises he'll try again next budget.

"When you go through something yourself, it changes your view," he said.

In DiGirolamo's case, it was his son, Gene Jr., now 29, who kicked a heroin
addiction six years ago. He is doing well now, working as vice president of
operations for a Florida firm.

But DiGirolamo remembers how he and wife Donna worried during his addiction.

"I can't imagine anything worse than having a child with an addiction, and
living with that every day."

DiGirolamo says he'll keep fighting for more money. Although he's concerned
that the Vance bill "puts all that money in one pot" where it might be
vulnerable to cuts, DiGirolamo and Vance do share a common view that drug
and alcohol treatment programs in Pennsylvania need increased and more
stable funding.

"We've just got to convince society that this money saves lives," he said.