ratbastid

Well if you want to slippery-slope it, sure. In the real world, though, there's a big difference between a sin tax and prohibition. It's like the difference between a throttle and a toggle switch.

A modern-day conservative will tell you that any tax is too much and a 0.01% increase will cause the end-times. An economist will tell you different. Consumer behavior follows very predictable responses to price increases. There's LOTS of science behind pricing.

For instance, you'll notice there's no cigarette black market, at least not on any appreciable scale. I've heard of trafficking operations moving cartons from low-tax to high-tax states, but it's not like that's widespread, and the profit margin is in the pennies. There aren't smoke-easys in back rooms where people are craftily evading the tobacco sin tax, you know? And yet smoking is way way down. Education has a lot to do with that, but for me, it was the ever-growing cost of my drug that had me quit (10 years ago this month, thank you thank you!).

All that said, I really don't want to go on record as "for" this particular tax issue. Seems like there are better places to target a tax bump than this. I say that with nothing else particularly in mind--it just seems a little targeted and arbitrary. I understand the justification for it I guess, it just seems like an awfully specific thing to point a tax at.

You've never seen my ass in TE!