H. Mac Gipson
Last year, the Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Control Board
returned $361 million to communities and citizens to help fund essential state
services such as mental health, women’s and children’s programs, education and
law enforcement.
Since the ABC Board’s creation 85 years ago, those revenues
have totaled more than $8.6 billion for the people of Alabama.
What’s even better is that the state of Alabama didn’t have
to provide one dime to pay for the ABC Board’s operations, which includes
regulating, licensing and inspecting businesses that sell alcoholic beverages
and tobacco products, and educating young people and adults about the dangers
of irresponsible alcohol consumption and underage drinking.
The ABC Board pays for itself through its wholesale liquor
operation and state-run liquor stores. We call them state stores because they
belong to the people of the state of Alabama, and they exist to serve and
benefit state residents.
I offer these facts because it’s important for Alabamians to
know how the ABC Board and its stores are working for them. This year, the ABC
Board began offering an online resource, www.Wheredoesthemoneygoalabama.com, that explains – literally – where ABC revenues go.
The website lists how revenues support many essential state
services that too often go underfunded.
For example, the Department of Human Resources, which has the
difficult task of ensuring the welfare of Alabama’s at-risk children, received
$84.7 million directly from the ABC Board in fiscal year 2020-2021. The
Department of Mental Health was the beneficiary of $63.4 million from the ABC
Board.
Without that funding, what would happen to those
overburdened agencies and the services they provide pregnant women and children
living below the poverty line and citizens in need of mental health services?
In addition, the ABC Board provided $37.1 million to
education, $17 million to the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency and $22.8 million
to various cities and counties.
And all of that was in addition to the $136.8 million the
ABC Board sent to the state General Fund Budget to help pay for other state
services.
Aside from highlighting ABC Board revenue, www.Wheredoesthemoneygoalabama.com also explains how Alabama’s system of liquor control is unique and effective.
Alabama is one of 17 “control states” that regulate the sale
of alcoholic beverages through distribution, licensing, regulation, law
enforcement and education. But Alabama is the only state that offers citizens a
choice between state-run stores and private stores. It may surprise some people
that Alabama has far more private liquor stores – more than 700 – than state
stores – 168.
When Prohibition ended in the 1930s and each state was left
on its own to determine how to regulate alcohol, Alabama lawmakers didn’t want
the state to resort to the pre-Prohibition bad old days of rampant corruption,
bootlegging, counterfeit and tainted alcohol products, and other problems. The
Legislature created the ABC Board in 1937 to oversee a system in which
responsible adults could lawfully purchase safe alcohol products, and to employ
controls that limit access to minors.
That system is working. Alabama ranks among the nation’s
leaders in per capita state revenue from the sale of liquor, while maintaining
one of the nation’s lowest levels of per capita consumption. That is what
Alabama citizens should demand from its regulatory agency.
Alcohol isn’t just any regular commodity, and purchasing it
shouldn’t be as easy as buying a loaf of bread. Alcohol is a drug that is
highly-addictive, ruins lives and kills. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention says more than 140,000 people in the U.S. die each year – 5,000
of them are under the age of 21 - because of alcohol.
Young people are especially susceptible to the dangers of
alcohol. Studies show that young people who start drinking before the age of 21
are five times more likely to become problem drinkers.
That’s why the ABC Board educates vendors on the methods to
prevent selling to minors, and why we created the “Under Age, Under Arrest”
program, which partners with law enforcement and public health and safety
advocates to educate young people about the consequences of underage drinking.
Regulating the sale of alcohol will always be an important
function of state government. Please know that Alabama’s system of control is
paying dividends for its citizens – both in the essential services it helps to
fund and the numerous protections it provides.
H. Mac Gipson is administrator of the Alabama Alcoholic
Beverage Control Board.
Media Contacts:
Dean R. Argo
Daniel Dye
Government Relations
Manager
Public Information Specialist
dean.argo@abc.alabama.gov
daniel.dye@abc.alabama.gov
(334)
213-6330
(334) 538-6778