MORE THAN HALFWAY through the legislative session, lawmakers finally are getting to work doing what the voters told them to do last November — changing the law that forces bartenders in South Carolina to serve the strongest drinks in the nation.

The legislation, designed to carry out the desires of voters who approved eliminating the state’s minibottle mandate by an overwhelming 59 percent, should help chip away at our nation-leading alcohol-death rate on the highways. Considering that, such details as who can sell liquor to bars and how that liquor is taxed are far less important than simply making the change.

But as long as we have to deal with the mechanics, we ought to make the best and smartest changes possible. And while a proposal approved Wednesday by a House subcommittee seems to do that, a bill awaiting Senate action doesn’t, on either contentious issue.

The biggest problem is with the way the Senate Finance Committee proposes to make sure the state doesn’t lose money when most bars stop serving from minibottles. The panel wants simply to increase the tax that individuals and businesses pay for a regular-sized bottle of liquor, from $1.42 a liter to $1.98.

It certainly sounds reasonable to charge everybody the same tax for the same amount of liquor. But it’s not.

Because minibottles are taxed at a rate equal to $6.42 a liter, the result will be that taxes will go down on the liquor people drink in a bar, and taxes will go up on the liquor people drink at home. That means that once the bill passes, the state will charge lower taxes than it currently does to people who are more likely to get in their cars and drive home after drinking; and the state will charge higher taxes than it currently does to people who are more likely to climb the stairs and go to bed after drinking. That’s backwards.

Supporters say this plan is easier to administer and less susceptible to cheating than the alternative, put forward by the Senate Judiciary Committee and by a special House subcommittee, to leave the tax at liquor stores alone and charge a 5 percent cocktail fee on drinks sold in bars and restaurants. Perhaps there is some marginal advantage to reducing the number of transactions that must be taxed, but the state somehow manages to collect a sales tax at the cash register on groceries, clothing and nearly every other consumer purchase, rather than taxing the wholesalers from which stores purchase these products. There’s no reason we couldn’t collect taxes on liquor the same way.

The other problem with the bill before the Senate is that it requires bars and restaurants to keep buying liquor from 58 special dealers. The only justification we’ve heard for this is that the dealers might go out of business if the state allowed bars to buy liquor directly from the wholesalers who sell it to them. But that’s simply the free market working as it should, and not a reason to perpetuate a government-mandated monopoly.

The main reason the stiff-drink mandate has stayed in place as long as it has is that these 58 businesses have convinced their friends in the Legislature to protect their interests by maintaining it. Now, senators appear poised to make sure the state continues to prop up those businesses, while at the same time establishing a new liquor tax system that puts simplicity ahead of public safety. It seems obvious, but apparently it’s not: Public safety should be the top consideration.