Do alcohol taxes improve traffic safety? Specific alcohol excise taxes and drunk-driving crashes in Türkiye.

INTRODUCTION: Alcohol taxation is a widely used public policy tool to reduce alcohol-related harm. However, studies directly examining the impact of alcohol taxes on alcohol-related crashes remain limited, particularly in middle-income countries. This study investigates how changes in specific alcohol excise taxes in Türkiye affect the number of drunk drivers involved in traffic crashes. METHOD: For this purpose, the study uses a monthly province-level panel dataset covering 81 provinces and 10,692 observations between 2013 and 2023. A product-weighted real tax index is constructed by weighting the specific excise taxes applied to 13 alcoholic beverages according to their monthly consumption shares. RESULTS: The results obtained using a Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood (PPML) model indicate a statistically significant negative relationship between the real tax index and the number of drunk drivers: A 10% increase in the tax index is associated with an approximately 9-13% decrease in drunk drivers involved in crashes, depending on the specification. In contrast, the estimates for non-drunk drivers involved in crashes are substantially smaller and less systematic, suggesting that the relationship between the real tax index and the number of drunk drivers involved in traffic crashes primarily works through the alcohol-related driving behavior. CONCLUSIONS AND PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS: These findings provide new evidence that specific excise taxes on alcoholic beverages can contribute to traffic safety objectives, particularly in high-tax and middle-income settings, as well as generate fiscal revenue.