Speaking of government expenditures and demon rum…
You know what else outweighs the $189.4 million federal Rural Health Transformation grant Governor Larry Rhoden announced yesterday? The $350 million plus that taxpayers spend cleaning up the messes created by drunks in South Dakota each year.
In 2015, Dr. Jeffrey Sacks and a team of other public health experts calculated costs of excessive alcohol consumption. They figured that in 2010, excessive drinking did $249 billion dollars of economic damage to the United States. Two-fifths of that cost, $101 billion, took the form of taxpayer dollars burned up in health care, lost productivity, law enforcement, and other government responses.
In South Dakota, the total economic harm of boozehoundery was $598 million. The cost to South Dakota taxpayers was $241 million. Assume similar bad booze behavior and adjust those figures for inflation, and in 2025, drunkenness cost South Dakota taxpayers $356 million, 1.9 times more than the Trump bucks we’re getting to prop up rural health care in South Dakota.
We don’t need to reinstate prohibition to recoup those losses. We could save $356 million in the state budget just by not putting up with anyone else getting drunk and capping our own drinking at one or none.
Legislators, lead the way! When the lobbyists come to wine and dine you this Session, make a point of asking for a cherry coke instead of the harder brews. Stopping the budgetary bleeding starts with you and the drink in your hand.