Research & Resources

The Community Preventive Services Task Force recommends increasing alcohol taxes based on strong evidence that this can reduce excessive alcohol consumption and related harms. However, questions have been raised about the potential impact of alcohol tax increases on the cost of alcohol to individual drinkers and on state employment. To help answer these questions, the Alcohol Program in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funded a research collaborative involving the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the University of Florida, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Boston Medical Center. This web tool was developed based on these research findings to model how much extra adult drinkers would pay for alcohol following various hypothetical state alcohol tax increases based on how much they drink, income, and employment status, as well as the effect these hypothetical tax increases would be expected to have on state employment.