Below is a statement from the Oregon Beverage Alliance on the release of the HB 3610 Task Force on Alcohol Pricing and Addiction Services final report:
“Task force members spent nearly all of 2024 digging into the issues of addiction services in Oregon and the economic impacts and contributions of local beer, wine and cider producers, and found tax increases on these homegrown businesses are not the answer.
“Instead, the task force found:
- Oregon’s breweries, wineries, cideries, distilleries, restaurants, bars and hospitality partners face major challenges doing business in this state. Between inflation, supply chain issues, employee shortages, high business taxes, a pandemic and a downward trend of drinking, these local businesses need the support of lawmakers to survive.
- Public comments submitted to the task force overwhelmingly opposed increasing beer, wine and cider taxes — 87.5% opposed tax increases.
- According to the Oregon Health Authority’s own study, alcohol taxes are a proven ineffective tool to curb problem consumption, including excessive or teen drinking.
- Despite alcohol being the third largest source of revenue for the state, the legislature only spends 3% of alcohol revenue on mental health and substance use disorders (SUD).
- The Oregon Health Authority (OHA) does not know whether money spent on behavioral health has made a difference because, as OHA testified, it does not track legislative funding or hold providers accountable. And it cannot account for $72 million — 7% — of SUD spending.
- Despite only six of 16 voting task force members working in the beverage industry, the task force did not have the votes to recommend increasing taxes because revenue is not the problem after a nearly $1.4 billion increase in recent SUD funding, it’s a lack of results and accountability from OHA and providers.
“OHA continues to mislead lawmakers, the public and media with misinformation:
- Claiming alcohol consumption is up when it’s down;
- Excessive and binge drinking is up when these claims are based on improperly comparing CDC data points before and after a change in the survey methodology;
- Substance use disorder rates are increasing when the National Survey of Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) changed methodology in 2020 making all older data incompatible with the most recent data set;
- Oregon is the second worst in the nation in rates of addiction or last in access to recovery services yet when accounting for the NSDUH margin of error there is no significant difference between Oregon and 37 other states according to an internal OHA whistleblower;
- OHA claims six Oregonians die from alcohol per day based on death certificates but it’s actually based on a theoretical model attributing alcohol as a cause of other diseases, not actual death certificates and admitted as much when called out yet continue to make these misstatements.
“Chair Sanchez called for accountability for the alcohol sector. We came to the table and found the lack of accountability is truly with OHA and addiction service providers. OHA has not proven to be a trusted partner and a third-party audit of OHA is warranted. Oregon’s beverage sector is a vital part of Oregon’s identity and economy.”
About the Oregon Beverage Alliance:
The Oregon Beverage Alliance is made up of local brewers, winemakers, cidermakers, distillers and their supply and hospitality partners creating hundreds of thousands of jobs and generating $17 billion of economic activity for Oregon annually.
