Looking for Revenue? Tax Booze

Amitai Etzioni: "A review of 72 studies and reports published in The Journal of Preventive Medicine found “strong evidence that raising alcohol taxes is an effective strategy for reducing excessive alcohol consumption and related harms.” The authors noted that “increased alcohol taxes are associated with decreased overall consumption, decreased youth consumption, decreased youth binge drinking, reduced alcohol-related motor-vehicle crashes, reduced mortality from liver cirrhosis, and reduced violence."...

For starters, the tax on alcohol should be based on a percentage of the price at which the product is sold, not on a fixed fee that lags behind rising prices. In this way, those who insist on gulping it down will contribute more to cutting the deficit and will stop benefiting from the fact that as most costs rise, booze costs can be kept down, as the government taxes become less burdensome over time."