Commissioners join effort on'alcopop' taxes

If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, then it must be ... a chicken.

That's what the Liquor Control Commission would have us believe.

Following a legislative battle, complete with a slew of amendments by Sen. Ernie Chambers that effectively killed a bill to reclassify flavored alcoholic beverages, the commission waved a wand last July and suddenly, the "alcopops" as they are known by opponents, became "beer."

It's enough to make your head go flat.

After years of trying to decide what to do about the new products, regulators decided in 2003 that alcopops should be classified -- and taxed -- at the "spirits" rate, since most of the alcohol they contained was created not by fermentation like beer, but added after being distilled.

There followed a battle between liquor industry representatives and groups like Project Extra Mile, which fights underage drinking, with LB 563, which would allow alcopops to have up to 49 percent of their alcohol derived from distillation, failing to advance in the last legislative session.

After a July 20 attorney general's opinion that the statute was ambiguous, and that the Nebraska Liquor Control Commission had the authority to do so, the commission reclassified the products as beer on July 31.

The duck was officially a chicken.

But Project Extra Mile doesn't agree, and neither do the Red Willow County Commissioners and many others around the state.

There are fiscal reason the commissioners are in favor of the change: beer is taxed at about 31 cents a gallon, while spirits -- like the alcopops used to be considered -- cost the buyer $3.75 per gallon in taxes. That could mean about $2 million a year in additional income for the state -- income that could help address, for instance, problems created by underage drinking.

But underage drinking is a far more important reason to discourage sale of the beverages.

According to figures compiled by Project Extra Mile, a third of teen girls have tried alcopops, and one out of six have done so in the past six months.

They are particularly attractive to girls, with nearly a third of girls having tried them in the past six months, compared to fewer than 20 percent of the boys. And, 75 percent of eighth grade drinkers had had an alcopop in the past month.

Classifying the drinks as beer makes them available at 1,535 off-premise locations in the state, compared to 718 if they were classified as distilled spirits, making them more easily available to underage drinkers.

Alcohol and young, impressionable minds are a bad combination.

Imposing tighter controls on alcoholic beverages that are especially attractive to such a vulnerable group is only reasonable.