Support for raising alcohol taxes in Missouri.Dear Editor: Increasing the price of alcoholic beverages
adj. bon·ni·er, bon·ni·est Scots 1. Physically attractive or appealing; pretty. 2. Excellent. & O'Connell, 2004). Missouri's alcohol taxes have not been raised since 1970 ("Missouri Advocates Struggle to Raise Alcohol Tax", 2005). Missouri ranks 48th among states in alcohol taxes with a tax rate of 6 cents per gallon (Center for Science in the Public Interest, 2004). The national average for alcohol taxes is 26 cents per gallon. The Missouri House of Representatives The Missouri House of Representatives is the lower chamber of the Missouri General Assembly. It has 163 members, representing districts with an average size of 31,000 residents. recently rejected a bill (HB 184) that would raise alcohol taxes to create additional funding for alcohol prevention, treatment, recovery, and law enforcement (Missouri House of Representatives, 2005). In an attempt to understand why Missouri's alcohol tax rate remains so low, we completed a research study examining Missourians' attitudes toward raising the state's alcohol tax. Since the majority of registered voters in the United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. support alcohol tax increases (American Medical Association, 2004), we predicted that Missouri voters would support a 2-cent-per-drink tax increase, especially to fund initiatives regarding alcohol problems and underage drinking. As shown by previous research (Latimer, Harwood, Newcomb, & Wagenaar, 2001; Richter, Vaughan, & Foster, 2001; Satterthwaite, 2005), we also expected that females, Protestants, Democrats, African Americans African American Multiculture A person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa. See Race. , younger participants, and those who consume little alcohol will be more likely than others to support the alcohol tax increase. Missouri's Youth/Adult Alliance and members of the Missouri Alcohol Impact Coalition funded this study. Mitchell Research (East Lansing, Michigan East Lansing is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan. The city is located directly east of Lansing, Michigan, the state's capital. Most of the city is within Ingham County, though a small portion lies in Clinton County. ) was hired to collect data. Our sample consisted of 500 randomly selected Missouri registered voters who were contacted by telephone. There were 251 (50%) females and 247 (49%) males. Mean age was 52.76 years (SD = 17.91). Most participants were Caucasian (458; 92%), 19 (4%) were African American, and 15 (3%) reported other ethnic categories. Most (64%) of the participants reported being Protestant, 21% reported being Catholic, 7% reported "other", and 8% either did not have a preference or had no religious affiliation. The anonymous interview took approximately six minutes and consisted of two parts. The first set of nine questions related to the participants' overall attitudes about an alcohol tax increase in Missouri (e.g., "Would you support or oppose an increase of two cents per drink in the state alcohol excise tax Excise Tax 1. An indirect tax charged on the sale of a particular good. 2. A penalty tax applied to ineligible transactions in retirement accounts. This penalty is assessed by and paid to the IRS. Notes: 1. ?"). The second set of questions focused on demographic information (ethnicity, gender, religious preference, political party affiliation, and number of drinks consumed per week). We predicted that Missouri voters would support a two-cent-per-drink alcohol tax increase, especially to fund specific initiatives regarding alcohol problems. Participants showed slight support for an increase in the alcohol tax (M = 3.71, SD = 1.54, on a scale from 1 to 5). Twenty-five percent of voters supported or strongly supported the increase, 47% were unsure, and 28% were opposed or strongly opposed. Their support increased slightly when a specific program was cited as being funded by the alcohol tax. When the increase was used to fund prevention, the mean support was 3.76 (SD = 1.50); when funds were used for health care costs the mean was 3.82 (SD = 1.47); when funds were used for treatment and recovery the mean was 3.88 (SD = 1.47); and when funds were used for law enforcement the mean was 3.89 (SD = 1.50). The second hypothesis predicted that females, Protestants, Democrats, African Americans, younger participants, and people who consumed little alcohol would be more likely to support the alcohol tax increase. We used a linear regression Linear regression A statistical technique for fitting a straight line to a set of data points. to analyze which demographic variables were associated with support of the alcohol tax increase (mean of all questions combined). Religion, gender, and drinks consumed per week were significant predictors of support for the tax, F(6, 488) = 6.90, p < .001, [R.sup.2] = .08. Women, Protestants, and people who consumed less alcohol were most likely to support the tax increase. We further analyzed an·a·lyze tr.v. an·a·lyzed, an·a·lyz·ing, an·a·lyz·es 1. To examine methodically by separating into parts and studying their interrelations. 2. Chemistry To make a chemical analysis of. 3. these data to examine the relationship between religion, gender, and drinks consumed. A Chi square chi square (kī), n a nonparametric statistic used with discrete data in the form of frequency count (nominal data) or percentages or proportions that can be reduced to frequencies. test of independence compared the frequency of abstention ABSTENTION, French law. This is the tacit renunciation by an heir of a succession Merl. Rep. h.t. from alcohol between men and women. We found that women (68%) were more likely than men (47%) to abstain from abstain from verb refrain from, avoid, decline, give up, stop, refuse, cease, do without, shun, renounce, eschew, leave off, keep from, forgo, withhold from, forbear, desist from, deny yourself, kick ( alcohol altogether ([c.sup.2] (1) = 23.69, p < .01). Religion showed a similar association with drinking. Protestants were more likely to abstain from alcohol (62%) than any other religion (48%), [c.sup.2] (1) = 9.15, p < .01. Therefore, gender and religion were related to number of drinks consumed. The most important finding in our study was that only 25% of Missourians favor an alcohol tax increase. However, support for raising the tax increased slightly when the resulting funds were earmarked for specific programs. Our findings show less support for an alcohol tax increase than a nationwide survey that found support among adults to be 64% (American Medical Association, 2004). The same study found that people tended to be uninformed about their state's alcohol tax rates and most expressed support for a tax increase after they were educated (American Medical Association, 2004). If we had provided participants with a brief education about the alcohol tax, perhaps levels of support in our study would have been higher. Protestants, women, and people who abstained from alcohol were most likely to support the increase. These findings concur CONCUR - ["CONCUR, A Language for Continuous Concurrent Processes", R.M. Salter et al, Comp Langs 5(3):163-189 (1981)]. with other research showing that women (Latimer, et al., 2001) and religious people (Bazargan, Sherkat, & Bazargan, 2004) tend to express greater support for alcohol tax increases. Other research has shown that those who never drink or those who drink once a month or less report the highest support for alcohol tax increases (American Medical Association, 2004). Our findings provide the demographic information needed to start an educational campaign to increase support for an alcohol tax increase in Missouri. An educational campaign is likely to be important for raising taxes since voters are largely unaware of local alcohol tax rates and how these rates compare to those of other states (American Medical Association, 2004). Our findings suggest that Protestants, women, and people who do not drink would be "champions" for this issue who could be called upon to start an educational campaign. There are several limitations of our study. First, we did not measure socioeconomic status socioeconomic status, n the position of an individual on a socio-economic scale that measures such factors as education, income, type of occupation, place of residence, and in some populations, ethnicity and religion. or education level. These data would have allowed us to further analyze who supported and did not support the alcohol tax increase. Another limitation was that all data were based on self-report. We do not know whether participants' responses represented a true description of their behaviors. Respondents may have underreported their own drinking behavior due to perceived social desirability. Finally, a polling firm was hired to complete the survey. Conditions such as the time of the call and the characteristics of the poller's voice could have possibly influenced the results. Last year, the Missouri State Legislature A state legislature may refer to a legislative branch or body of a political subdivision in a federal system. The following legislatures exist in the following political subdivisions: REFERENCES American Medical Association. (2004, April). National Survey on Alcohol and Beer Taxes. Retrieved September 29, 2004, from http://www.alcoholpolicymd.com/press_room/polls/ alcohol_tax_poll.htm. Bazargan, S., Sherkat, D.E., & Bazargan, M. (2004). Religion and alcohol use among African-American and Hispanic inner-city emergency care patients. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 43(3), 419-428. Bonnie R.J., & O'Connell, M.E. (Eds.). (2004). Reducing Underage Drinking: A Collective Responsibility. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press. Center for Science in the Public Interest. (2004). Factbook on State Beer Taxes. Washington DC: CSPI CSPI Center for Science in the Public Interest CSPI Corporate Service Price Index CSPI Cumulative Schedule Performance Index . Kenkel, D, & Manning, W. (1996). Perspectives on alcohol taxation. Alcohol Health & Research World, 20 (4), 230-239. Latimer, W.W., Harwood, E.M., Newcomb, M.D., & Wagenaar, A.C. (2001). Sociodemographic and individual predictors of alcohol policy attitudes: Results from a US probability sample. Alcoholism alcoholism, disease characterized by impaired control over the consumption of alcoholic beverages. Alcoholism is a serious problem worldwide; in the United States the wide availability of alcoholic beverages makes alcohol the most accessible drug, and alcoholism is : Clinical and Experimental Research, 25(4), 549-556. Missouri advocates struggle to raise alcohol tax. (2005, March). Alcoholism & Drug Abuse Weekly, 17(11), 5-6. Missouri House of Representatives. (2005, January 10). House Bill Number 184. Retrieved March 10, 2004, from http:// www.house.state.mo.us/bills051/biltxt/intro/HB0184I.htm Richter, L., Vaughan, R., & Foster, S. (2001). Public attitudes about underage drinking policies: Results from a national survey. Journal of Public Health Policy, 25(1), 58-77. Satterthwaite, S. (2005). Faster horses, older whiskey whiskey [from the Gaelic for "water of life"], spirituous liquor distilled from a fermented mash of grains, usually rye, barley, oats, wheat, or corn. Inferior whiskeys are made from potatoes, beets, and other roots. , and more money: An analysis of religious influence on referenda voting. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 44(1), 105-112. Alicia J. Ozenberger Missouri Youth/Adult Alliance Association of community Task Forces (ACT) Missouri Gerrit L. DenHartog Missouri Youth/Adult Alliance Association of Community Task Forces (ACT) Missouri Mara S. Aruguete Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences behavioral sciences, n.pl those sciences devoted to the study of human and animal behavior. Lincoln University Lincoln University. 1 At Jefferson City, Mo.; coeducational; land-grant and state supported; founded 1866 as Lincoln Institute. The school was established for the education of freed slaves by members of the 62d and 65th U.S. Colored Regiments. Elizabeth S Elizabeth, sister of King Louis XVI of France Elizabeth, 1764–94, sister of King Louis XVI of France, known as Madame Elizabeth. Deeply loyal to her brother, she remained in France during the French Revolution, suffered imprisonment, and was . Gold Department of Psychology Stephens College Stephens College is a liberal arts women's college located in Columbia, Missouri, a city of about 90,000 residents. It is one of the oldest institutions of higher education for women in the United States. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Dr. Mara S. Aruguete, Lincoln University, 820 Chestnut St., 310 FH, Jefferson City Jefferson City, city (1990 pop. 35,481), state capital and seat of Cole co., central Mo., on the south bank of the Missouri River, near the mouth of the Osage; inc. 1825. , MO 65102-0029, 572-681-6191, aruguetem@lincolnu.edu. |
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