What if they gave a tax cut -- and nobody noticed? It happened in Tallahassee. Since 1990, Florida drinkers have paid a liquor surcharge on alcoholic beverages by the glass. The 3.3 percent tax doesn't add much to the per-drink cost, but the few cents add up: It is expected to bring in about $50 million this year.

Part of that money goes into a trust fund to run a program designed to prevent children and teens from developing substanceabuse problems. Taxing drinkers to help pay for substance-abuse prevention sounds like a logical thing to do.

But there is a lot wrong with the surcharge.

For starters, only a small portion of the money goes into the substance-abuse trust fund.

The tax was passed during the closing hours of the Legislature in 1990 in an attempt to balance the state budget. In order to make the budget-balancing tax more acceptable, a portion was designated for a substance-abuse-prevention program. It seemed to be more of an afterthought than anything else. Of the $50 million expected to be collected this year, the program will receive $12.5 million.

Owners of Florida's bars and restaurants bring up another valid point when they say the by-thedrink tax is difficult to collect and calculate. It was, they said, a pest: For every one ounce of liquor or four ounces of wine, the tax added just more than 3 cents a drink, and less than 2 cents for a beer.

Two years ago, the Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability, the independent auditing arm of the Legislature, recommended that the surcharge be eliminated or modified. That echoed the same stand OPPAGA had taken in a 1999 review.

"Currently affecting 21,646 Florida businesses, the drink tax is an expensive and cumbersome tax to collect," said Carol Dover, president of the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association. It cost businesses more to collect than was sent to the state in revenue, she added.

There was also another matter that made the by-the-drink surcharge an easy repeal target: Florida collects more total tax dollars on alcoholic beverages than any other state.

In terms of per capita collections, Florida ranks third (behind Alaska and South Carolina). Even without the by-the-drink surcharge, Florida would collect more money from excise taxes on alcohol than any other state except Texas.

In June, Gov. Jeb Bush signed a bill that will do away with the tax on July 1 of next year. It will also be the end of the trust fund that supplies money for the abuse program.

And while the elimination of the trust fund -- particularly one with such good intentions -- isn't a cause for celebration, it won't be as bad as it could be.

The Florida Alcoholic and Drug Abuse Association represents 120 community-based organizations across the state that deal in substance abuse.

John Daigle, executive director of the association, told the Naples Daily News that eliminating the tax will have little effect on the drug-abuse program it funded. He said the state had promised 95 percent of the money lost would be replaced by money from the state's general fund.

Department of Children & Families spokeswoman Erin Geraghty told the newspaper that instead of the substance-abuse program being dependent on alcohol consumption, the state would provide a recurring amount each year from general revenues.

Most restaurant and bar owners interviewed by the paper were also unaware the repeal law had passed. Skip Quillen, owner of three restaurants in the Naples area, said: "Did that pass? I heard [politicians] talk about it [but] we never had any problems with it. Our system is computerized."

So the tax was repealed. Because most of the revenue it raised went to the general fund, it didn't provide a lot of help for the substance-abuse program for which it was intended. Outside of a few lobbyists in Tallahassee who had an interest one way or another, not many people seemed to care.

But that doesn't mean the state shouldn't keep it's promise to provide annual funding for the substance-abuse prevention program the liquor surcharge helped. If the Legislature tampers with that, people should sit up and take notice

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