This week the Solons who govern the State of California have decided to take action to prevent the drinking of alcoholic beverages by people under the age of twenty-one.
"What," you may well ask," have these paragons of wisdom and intelligence decided to do to prevent Justin and Tiffany from getting falling down drunk or driving their cars into the minivan carrying the members of the local baseball team?" Have they perhaps increased the penalty for merchants who sell demon rum to the high school cheer leading squad? Or perhaps have law enforcement descend on the local loud party at which Harold teen and his friends are dead drunk on the front lawn?
Nah. They've decided to try kill two birds with one stone. Discourage teen aged drinking while making money from teen aged drinkers. After a lot of "hard" study, they've decided to increase the tax on "alcopops." Alcopops are those bottled drinks with a fermented malted base ans a fruit flavor. In other words, beer that tastes like lemonade or some other fruit drink. Examples are such drinks as Mike's Hard Lemonade, Zima and Seagrams coolers. The tax on such beverages will be increased three dollars per gallon, or about one and a half dollars per six pack. The thinking is that young people don't like the taste of beer or hard liquor. They like the taste of soda pop. Thus if the price of hootch that tastes like pop goes up them crazy kid's will make a right turn to the nearest ice cream parlour instead of falling under the influence of John Barleycorn.
To be blunt, that's bullcorn.The tax increase punishes those adults who have the misfortune to like the taste of such silly drinks in the name of "the children" while it will do nothing to curb teen aged drinking, binge or otherwise. It's a show, it's a pose. It's a way to say, "We're doing something!" while in reality the legislature is doing nothing but finding another way to bring in the long green. The legislature might as well increase the tax on sweet wines and mixed drinks. It would be much more effective to punish those teenagers found drinking or drunk with jail time or community service or fines. But those actions don't bring money into Sacramento. They cost money.
Any kid who wants to get drunk will do so whether or not he or she can cough up the extra buck and a half for Zima. They'll soon develop a taste for Coors Light or Olde English 800. Meanwhile, their Mom, having to put up with such brats, will find that her nightly bottle of Zima is too much to cover with her Wal-Mart paycheck, and will find it more economical to buy a fifth of vodka and down a couple of screwdrivers while waiting for her little dears to come home from the local fiesta. And then Junior will find the Popov in the bread box and start his day with a screwdriver before heading to school.
On a somewhat similar topic, some idiot in the federal government has decided that it might be a good idea to increase the federal tax on cigarettes by one dollar per pack and on cigars by as much as ten dollars per cigar. The idea behind this is twofold. The first is to "discourage" smoking. The second is to use the tax money to pay for a federal health care scheme to treat children (children in this case means people up to the age of twenty-five. When your faithful correspondent was twenty-five he had been married five years, had served a four year apprenticeship, was a member of the Naval Reserve, was buying a house and had to pay for his health care out of pocket and didn't whine about it).
Other people a lot smarter than yours has looked at this phenomenon of increasing tobacco taxes to "discourage" smoking and have asked one question that has yet to be answered: If the government wants to discourage smoking why doesn't it just outlaw tobacco? Why not just have a tobacco prohibition? And the answer is: because if tobacco is made an illegal substance the government will receive no revenue from tobacco that it sold illegally. Let's face it, you local marijuana dealer, once caught in the act, is likely to suffer a lesser penalty than a cigarette smuggler. There's no money in pot for the Feds. There is money in Camels.
And it's all for the children. Damn brats!
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