Maybe the answer to flawed vice taxes is to address those flaws rather than to advocate for an outright ban.

Seems obvious that it should be percentage with minimum amount. Would treat both sides fairly.

> The issue is that vice taxes tend to be highly regressive.

For a cross-sectional view this is certainly true. At a single point in time, a high tax rate impacts people who are more economically vulnerable more than those that are wealthier. However, does the causality hold if we consider this over time?

Addictive substances use -> economically impoverished, or economically impoverished -> addictive substances use?

To me it seems many folks use addictive substances to self medicate in absence (or in spite of) a universal healthcare system. And then when economically improving opportunities come may have less capacity to claim them.

Do we look at it this way? Does it matter? General open questions.

This is the problem I have with the sugar tax. It is typically per ounce. Normally the more sugar something has, the more expensive it is. The more expensive it is, the less the sugar tax effects the price. A bottle of coke goes up like 25 cents, but a gallon of ice tea had is outside doubled.

There are probably 100x more buyers of cheap alco than something that you mentioned