[mhardcastle]

People respond to incentives, why wouldn't they respond to taxes on alcohol?

"Public policies affecting the price of alcoholic beverages have significant effects on alcohol-related disease and injury rates. Our results suggest that doubling the alcohol tax would reduce alcohol-related mortality by an average of 35%, traffic crash deaths by 11%, sexually transmitted disease by 6%, violence by 2%, and crime by 1.4%."

From https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2951962/