Pubdate: Wed, 16 May 2007
Source: Victoria News (CN BC)
Copyright: 2007 Victoria News
Contact:  http://www.vicnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1267

TAX ADDICTIONS

About 75 per cent of homeless people have some sort of addiction 
problem. The addictions -- whether to alcohol, illicit drugs, or even 
gambling -- make it enormously difficult for the afflicted to find 
employment or housing.

While it's now a worker's market, few employers are so desperate that 
they'll risk hiring people too drunk or stoned to do the job. Addicts 
need to clean up their acts. The problem is they need help -- lots of it.

Now that we've established that getting addicts to kick their 
addictions is a key first step to getting them off the street, then 
we should support efforts to do that.

Where will the money come from?

How about from liquor taxes and the government's share of gaming revenues?

We're prepared to go further and recommend legalization and 
government control of other recreational drugs with sufficient taxes 
raised to finance measures to help the addicts. We admit, though, 
that a heroin tax will be a tough sell -- even in these enlightened 
and permissive times. So let's stick with those booze tax dollars.

By increasing the total price of a product, a tax generally leads to 
lower consumption. It makes sense, on the face of it anyway, that 
anything that decreases alcohol consumption should reduce incidences 
of alcohol addiction.

The tax regime can even be refined further -- so that the alcohol 
itself is taxed. A study a couple of years ago by the Centre for 
Addictions Research at the University of Victoria proposed a lower 
tax rate for low-alcohol beer. In jurisdictions where 
high-alcohol-content beer is taxed at a higher rate, sales of 
low-alcohol beer are much higher than they are in Canada, the study found.

We suspect that reasonable consumers will support higher taxes on 
alcohol if they know the money will help battle addictions.

Of course, curing addictions is notoriously difficult, as anyone who 
has tried to stop smoking will attest. For any given patient, we can 
expect failure the first time, the second time and even the third 
time. Even after five or six treatment programs, there are no guarantees.

Note also that most addicts don't end up on the street. They manage 
to hold onto their homes and even their jobs. The ones who become 
homeless are, we should expect, among those with the most difficult 
habits to kick.

British Columbia currently has net income from liquor sales of about 
$800 million a year.

According to a government fact sheet, the province now spends $1 
billion on mental health and addiction services and $328 million a 
year on affordable housing and emergency shelters.

Those are big improvements over a few years ago, the government is 
eager to tell us.

But it's time to spend more -- or maybe more wisely.

Let's test an idea social services agencies have been advocating for 
years: that putting the money into addiction treatment and stable 
housing will actually cost less than what is now spent on emergency 
care and policing.

Build barracks if necessary. That's how the Indonesian government 
housed refugees after the 2004 tsunami. It will take a commitment 
from the addicts themselves though -- that they might have to move 
away from downtown for treatment.

This really is an emergency. Let's treat it like one.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman