As New Mexico maintains the highest rate of deaths from alcohol misuse, lawmakers are again considering changes to state liquor tax policy to redirect revenue to treatment options.

Prior bills attempting to do so have failed in the last three legislative sessions, and lawmakers this week continued to express skepticism that changes to tax policy could impact the problem.

In a presentation Monday before the interim Revenue Stabilization and Tax Policy Committee meeting in Santa Fe, state Sen. Antoinette Sedillo Lopez and Rep. Cristina Parajón, both Albuquerque Democrats, noted that for nearly 30 years, New Mexico has had the highest rate of deaths from alcohol use in the United States. During that time, the state’s liquor taxes have remained mostly stagnant.

Currently, the state collects about $50 million annually from taxes from alcohol distributors. Of that, half goes to the general fund to be spent as state revenue. Of the remaining tax revenue, 45% benefits a local DWI grant fund, while another 5% helps fund the state’s drug courts. A final 0.05% — or about $20,000 per year — goes to Farmington for “alcohol treatment and rehabilitation services for street inebriates,” according to state law.

In last year’s legislative session, Sedillo Lopez and Parajón co-sponsored House Bill 417, which would have established higher taxes for distributors along with a new sales tax, but the bill did not advance to a floor vote.  Instead, a small per-glass tax on alcohol, which critics called an industry-friendly bill, passed.

Sedillo Lopez said seeing the patterns of alcohol misuse in her family “replicated in New Mexico over and over again” persuaded her to push for a policy fix.

“I do not believe that we are going to move the needle in this state until we get a handle on the misuse of alcohol in this state, and that’s why I got on board,” Sedillo Lopez told the committee. “It also didn’t seem fair to me that the alcohol tax, which is extremely regressive, hasn’t been changed in 33 years.”

Rep. Micaela Lara Cadena (D-Mesilla), said she “remains quite dubious about where the research lands on the ways our tax policy single-handedly can change behavior,” but said sending tax revenues to impacted communities rather than the state’s coffers was a better policy move.

“There seems to be that one point of agreement, that if we’re collecting tax on alcohol, we don’t need it in the general fund,” Lara Cadena said.

Parajón said that taxation is only a first step, and the Legislature needs to also invest in treatment, behavioral health and housing.

“This is part of the solution, this is not the whole solution,” she said.