Relaxing State Retail Alcohol Controls: The Public Health Harms and Costs

In 2011, governors and conservative legislatures in four of 11 states with state-run monopoly spirits sales pushed to shift to private sales at many more outlets, while Georgia voted on allowing off-premises alcohol sales on Sundays.

The study aims: (1) to develop and apply a simulation model that estimates the harms from privatization and the dollar costs to state government and to society, (2) to perform secondary data analyses that validate or correct libertarian analyses of the public health consequences of privatization and answer related questions raised by state legislators, (3) evaluate the role the analysis plays in the decision process about these public health laws, and (4) inject non-partisan input into the policy debate.