With my finances it would have to be really cheap stuff.
I could still drink one or two Keystones or Coors at a party, or a shot of cheap tequila, reminiscing about some of the weird crazy-man times of my misspent youth, but TEN a DAY, EVERY DAY???
NO THANK YOU.
Might I be a ten-a-day drinker if I wasn't so cheap? I don't know. Give me a never ending supply of high quality beer, maybe I would.
It scares me, but I have a sudden urge for a Natural Ice. Just one. Our neighborhood isn't so bad that we have a gas station selling single 12 ounce cans of cheap beer, or a individual cigarettes. That's illegal. We've lived in neighborhoods like that. The police had hookers and drug dealers to harass, what did they care about the guy selling singles behind the bullet proof glass in the gas station?
Our local grocery store only sells Natural Ice in a 12 pack.
So maybe this article has a point. High taxes on cigarettes seems to have reduced the number of kids smoking, or at least shifted them to those nasty energy drinks, or cannabis...
What I worry about is that Cook's proposal is a severely regressive tax. There's no reason to raise the price of beer and wine for those who have nothing and don't abuse alcohol. One or two beers or glasses of wine every day is no sin, and no health hazard. Why should we punish people for being poor?
Instead of raising taxes, easily accessible treatment for drug and alcohol addictions ought to be freely available as part of the public health care system. Even so, what we have now in most of the U.S.A., with our relatively high quality and inexpensive mass market wines and beers, is better than what they have in some parts of the world where alcoholics are frequently poisoned by, or overdose on. bootleg alcohol. That's what happens with other drug prohibitions and severe restrictions.
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