By Sept. 15 a state task force may be recommending that the Legislature increase taxes for beer and wine.

It’s at a time when the state’s beer and wine businesses aren’t doing as well as they have been in the past. Last year was one of the industry’s worst with about 30 businesses closing.

It’s at a time when Oregonians have struggled with rising prices on a number of goods.

It’s also at a time when one in five Oregonians have a problem with abuse of alcohol. That’s defined as people binge drinking more than four or five drinks a night, or drinking more than one or two drinks a night over a week.

“More than 2,000 people in Oregon die from alcohol-related causes every year,” the Oregon Health Authority says. That’s “three times the number who die from other drug overdoses.” And you can list plenty of other ways that alcohol creates harm.

The Oregon Health Authority has also been the first state health department in the country to launch its own advertising campaign to get people thinking about drinking, “Rethink the drink.”

The state task force is just getting started.

We don’t know if it is a signal or not, but the group, which does include representation from the health side, the regulatory side, the industry side and legislators, including state Sen. Tim Knopp, R-Bend, appointed Rep. Tawna Sanchez, D-Portland, as the group’s chair. Sanchez, who is in recovery herself and who does social work, has taken the lead on bills to raise taxes on beer and wine.

“The bill that would have raised beer and wine taxes by 33% — that was an opening salvo, because I have been trying to have this conversation for a very, very long time,” she said at a meeting earlier in January of the Alcohol Pricing and Addiction Services task force. “This is the conversation that I have been wanting us to have for the longest time, because I can hear that people are struggling.”

Many members of the task force made pleas that the task force make decisions based on data. What does the state spend on addiction and treatment now? How effective is it? And, of course, what share of the burden should taxes on beer and wine play?

Oregon does have some of the lowest taxes on beer and wine. Check out the numbers here: tinyurl.com/ORbeerwinetaxes. Low taxes, though, help keep people employed.

Swirl together people and alcohol and some people are going to have problems. And it would be easy to look at it and see it as an intractable issue. But it is possible to take on the challenge in a constructive way. The last thing the beer and wine businesses may need is a tax increase. The last thing Oregon needs is also more people struggling with alcohol or dying from it.