by Jim Brown and Jason Collum
A former U.S. secretary of health, education and welfare says increasing taxes on beer, wine and liquor and restricting their advertising will spare America a great deal of crime, health costs and could significantly cut back on the number of teenagers engaging in premarital sex.
The public costs and private agony of the misuse and abuse of alcohol are enormous according to Joseph Califano, president and chairman of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse. He said the public costs are in crime, and illnesses such as cirrhosis of the liver, heart disease and cancers.
Califano believes those costs, as well as much private agony will be lessened if taxes on alcohol are raised. Califano says raising beer, wine and liquor taxes will also reduce the amount of sexually transmitted diseases contracted by teens who negate in sexual activity after becoming high on alcohol.
“Most teen pregnancies occur because one or both of the teens are high at the moment of conception,” Califano said. “The child abuse, the domestic violence, and the family break-up attributable to misuse and abuse of alcohol are enormous, and [raised taxes] will reduce all of those things.
He is also calling for an end to alcohol advertising during nationally-televised college sporting events. “The beer industry particularly, and the alcohol industry as well, but beer is the number one culprit here, should not be advertising in publications that have a high readership of young people,” Califano said. “And for these college events, and any television programming that is going to have an enormous number of kids watching.”
Califano says by-and-large, the day should come in this country when there is not alcohol advertising on television, just as there is no cigarette advertising on the tube.
(This article courtesy of Agape Press.)
