DIYbanter - View Single Post - OT

In article ,
says...
On 03 Jan 2004 22:05:26 GMT, otforme (Charlie Self)
wrote:

JOAT notes:

Oh, I dunno. When I was in Turkey, alcoholism was apparently a
major problem - and that's a country where, supposedly, drinking alcohol
is against the major religion.

Just reinforces my point: bans on alcohol don't work, probably can't work. As
someone else noted, many things are invented by a single society, but in the
case of booze, some version or other has been invented by every society we've
ever uncovered.

Charlie, look beyond banning alcohol entirely. How about very heavy
taxation so that drinking beyond a socially accepted range becomes too
expensive to sustain?

No, when taxation on any item becomes sufficiently oppressive,
enterprising folks will find a way around that tax -- i.e. bootleg
cigarettes or alcohol. When the taxation rate reaches sufficient
levels, the profit motive / risk margin in bootlegging becomes
sufficiently large that the shadier elements of society view it as a
reasonable endeavor and the formerly law abiding tolerate those shady
elements to get what they want at less confiscatory prices. There is a
law of unintended consequences to the ever-persistent "solution" of
"just tax it until it's too painful to do". The flip side of this is
that to provide sufficient level of enforcement to break the bootlegging
business, the civil liberties of the entire society are sacrificed --
look at the various loss of privacy and liberty already resulting from
the war on drugs.