TAKE ACTION to STOP SB 620 - No Direct to Consumer Shipments in CA

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SB 620 (Allen) would make direct-to-consumer (DTC) shipping of distilled spirits and beer permanently legal in California, a major threat to public health and safety.

It creates a dangerous policy by:

• Fundamentally undermining the three-tier system, allowing all producers to also be distributors and retailers.
• Promoting DTC delivery of cheap, mass-market distilled spirits and beer by megacorporations.
• Failing in efforts to promote small, local producers over large, out-of-state ones.
• Incentivizing producers to deliver booze to peoples' doors in quantities that exceed any measure of "responsible" drinking.
• Making responsible beverage service difficult or impossible, and putting it on the shoulders of delivery drivers who are untrained and pressured to move on to the next doorstep.
• Stripping California of state control over its own alcohol market and sparking a race to the regulatory bottom.
• Making the state choose between gutting union jobs or increasing per capita consumption. (Or both.)

This increase in access to consumers, quantities consumed, and freedom from accountability comes at a time when alcohol harm is rapidly increasing in California. Damage from alcohol has been steadily rising for 20 years. Diagnoses of alcohol use disorder increased 50% from 2002 to 2012, and this has resulted in an alarming rise in alcohol-related deaths. Between 1999 and 2017, the raw number of alcohol deaths doubled, accounting for a 50% increase in death rate. This is not the result of long-term alcohol abuse; mortality rates among 25 to 34 year-olds saw annual increases between 4.6% and a staggering 12%. The annual rate of death from cirrhosis of the liver increased 10.5% between 2009 and 2016 in this same age group.

With these numbers in mind, efforts to radically expand alcohol markets have costs that far outweigh any perceived local economic benefit, even assuming that said benefit is not subsumed by multinational megaproducers. Tell your legislators to vote NO ON SB 620.

TAKE ACTION - Tell Congress Not to Cut Alcohol Taxes

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Congress is being relentlessly lobbied to lower alcohol taxes by extending the Craft Beverage Modernization and Tax Reform Act of 2019 (S. 362; H.R. 1175). It's a very bad idea. It will mostly benefit major alcohol producers - many of whom are foreign-owned - at the expense of the public and the government.

The federal alcohol excise tax has not been raised since 1991, while alcohol-related deaths have doubled over the last 10 years. In addition, numerous studies have shown that increases in alcohol prices and/or taxes – not lower taxes - are associated with reductions in alcohol consumption and related problems, like motor vehicle fatalities, violent crime and alcohol-related diseases.

TAKE ACTION NOW to tell key Congressional leaders and your members of Congress to prioritize public health and safety over alcohol industry profits by voting no on extending tax cuts. They will also be strengthening the federal budget by boosting revenue. The public needs a windfall, Big Alcohol will continue to do just fine. 

Tell Gov. Newsom: California Communities Lose When the Booze is Loose

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Under the dubious guise of “regulatory relief,” long-standing, evidence-based California alcohol policies critical to public health and safety have been rolled back during the COVID-19 crisis by the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control.

The California Alcohol Policy Alliance (CAPA) is a coalition of diverse organizations and communities throughout California united to protect health and safety, and prevent alcohol-related harm. CAPA believes Governor Newsom's COVID-19 response has failed by making alcohol "essential".

TAKE ACTION now to respectfully urge the Governor to carefully reexamine the state's relationship to alcohol during this pandemic, and make public health and safety "essential" by doing the following:

• Reinstate ABC regulations that prevent alcohol takeout and delivery
• Address the disproportionate increase in alcohol harms to communities of color
• Increase alcohol taxes and allocate the additional funds to treatment and prevention
• Retire outdated/unused alcohol licenses
• Create statewide standard alcohol policy regulations within the Covid-19 response

Californians do not need encouragement to consume more alcohol at this time. The state already suffers over $34 billion in annual alcohol-related harm, with over 10,500 deaths and hundreds of thousands of injuries requiring hospital visits.

In addition, alcohol weakens immune systems, making it harder to fight off Covid-19. Even individuals who may not have a substance use disorder but are drinking more during the pandemic are at risk. Drunk driving, alcohol-related violence, domestic abuse, financial problems, the risk for liver disease, breast cancer, depression, stroke and heart attack will all increase with excessive drinking.

Reduce Alcohol-Related Harm During COVID-19

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Public Health & Safety are Essential

Tell your Governor: COVID-19 alcohol deregulation should not become the new normal!

Public Health Not Public Drinking

Under the dubious guise of “regulatory relief,” long-standing, evidence-based alcohol regulations critical to public health and safety have been rolled back during the COVID-19 crisis.

By not acknowledging the existing level of alcohol-related harm, and ignoring the increases in harm that deregulation is causing, states are suffering a public policy failure that is disproportionately affecting people of color and the economically disadvantaged. It is also placing additional stress on public health delivery systems already struggling to keep up with COVID victims.

It is time to tell Governors of all states to carefully reexamine their state's relationship to alcohol during this pandemic, and make public health and safety "essential" by doing the following:

• Reinstate regulations that prevent alcohol takeout and haphazard delivery
• Address the disproportionate increase in alcohol harms to communities of color
• Increase alcohol taxes and allocate the additional funds to treatment and prevention
• Retire outdated/unused alcohol licenses
• Create evidence-based statewide standard alcohol policy regulations within the Covid-19 response

Nobody needs encouragement to consume more alcohol at this time. The country already suffers too much from over-consumption. In addition, alcohol weakens immune systems, making it harder to fight off Covid-19. Even individuals who may not have a substance use disorder but are drinking more during the pandemic are at risk. Drunk driving, violence, domestic abuse, financial problems, the risk for liver disease, breast cancer, depression, stroke and heart attack will all increase with excessive drinking.

Tell your Governor: Please make public health and safety essential, not alcohol industry profits.

TAKE ACTION - Text REGULATE to 313131