If you need help kicking a cigarette habit in Pennsylvania, there's $31 million in tobacco lawsuit settlement money earmarked for that purpose this year.

When the state's first casinos open, the owners must have a plan for spotting and referring compulsive gamblers to treatment, and they must prominently post signs displaying a help hotline number.

If you're a problem drinker, though, help isn't nearly so well funded or so visible.

Last year, liquor and wine sales brought in nearly $200 million in tax revenue from the 18 percent tax on wine and liquor. But only about $2 million of that is designated for treating problem drinkers.

Pennsylvania's 8 cents per gallon tax on beer, meanwhile, is the fourth lowest in America and has been unchanged since 1947. If legislators doubled the rate this fall, the state would still be below the national average. All of that money goes into the state's general fund.

At a time when the state seems to be pushing alcohol with expanded Sunday sales -- liquor sales increased 7 percent for the second consecutive year last year -- should Pennsylvania be using more alcohol tax proceeds to treat problem drinkers?

For George Hacker, director of the Alcohol Policies Project of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Science in the Public Interest, the answer is obvious.

"All you have to do is look at the tremendous disparity between the social costs brought on by the consumption of alcohol and the relatively piddling amount of revenue that is brought in for the sale" of liquor, wine and beer, Hacker said.

"It's probably 10 to 1."

Hacker said Pennsylvania's beer tax, in particular, amounts to a steady price cut for beer over the more than five decades it's remained unchanged, longer than in any other state.

"One dollar in 1947 is probably worth at best 5-10 cents today," he said. "The failure to adjust the tax for inflation has robbed the treasury of hundreds of millions of dollars in potential revenue."

Some of which, Hacker suggested, could have gone to help problem drinkers.

It is the wine and liquor tax, though, that has drawn recent legislative attention.

State Senators Pat Vance, R-Cumberland, and Jay Costa Jr., D-Forest Hills, have introduced a bill to redirect most of the money to state-funded drug and alcohol treatment programs.

The bill would impose no new taxes, but 75 percent of future new revenue would go to those programs as well.

The idea, said Vance, is to switch the funding source from the general fund to a dedicated allocation based on liquor sales. The idea got started in 2003 when the general fund allocation was drastically cut in the preliminary 2003-04 budget.

That experience, Vance said, "showed everyone just how really vulnerable this funding was, and it made people stop to think about the consequences of not treating drug and alcohol addictions."

While she sees "a kind of poetic justice" in using the liquor tax to fund drug and alcohol rehabilitation, she acknowledged that the cause is a tough sell. "There are so many people who think, 'It's their fault, and why should we be doing something for them?' " Even for the long-untouched beer tax, Vance said, "I'm not sure the legislative will is there" to raise it.

Another Republican, Rep. Gene DiGirolamo of Bucks County, fought the $2.9 million cut in drug and alcohol spending this year and pushed for an additional $5 million.

That effort fell short, but DiGirolamo promises he'll try again next budget.

"When you go through something yourself, it changes your view," he said.

In DiGirolamo's case, it was his son, Gene Jr., now 29, who kicked a heroin addiction six years ago. He is doing well now, working as vice president of operations for a Florida firm.

But DiGirolamo remembers how he and wife Donna worried during his addiction.

"I can't imagine anything worse than having a child with an addiction, and living with that every day."

DiGirolamo says he'll keep fighting for more money. Although he's concerned that the Vance bill "puts all that money in one pot" where it might be vulnerable to cuts, DiGirolamo and Vance do share a common view that drug and alcohol treatment programs in Pennsylvania need increased and more stable funding.

"We've just got to convince society that this money saves lives," he said.