Christopher Ingraham hails as a "rather nifty side benefit" of high tobacco taxes a corresponding decrease in alcohol consumption. That's perfectly fine to have as an opinion, of course, but Ingraham made that admission in an ostensibly objective article for the Washington Post.
In his 10-paragraph October 28 story, "Tobacco tax hike could cut drinking,"* the Post staff writer noted how a "new study from the Washington University School of Medicine suggests the government could take a bit out of both [excessive drinking and smoking deaths]... with one simple policy change": hiking cigarette taxes.
The study found "the same 10 percent cigarette price increase also leads to a 1 percent decrease in alcohol consumption." Of course, that impact is limited to "reductions in beer and spirits consumption, but not wine." Wine, according to the researchers, is the adult beverage of choice of those who are "less likely to smoke, more educated, and more likely to have healthier lifestyle habits."
Hmm, that sounds like the average upper-middle class liberal Washington Post subscriber. Perhaps that's why Ingraham let down his hair a bit and worked in his personal opinion that "at the state level, there's still a lot of room for tobacco tax increases." After all:
State taxes on a pack of cigarettes range from $0.15 in Missouri to $4.35 in New York. Kentucky could tack on an additional nine dollars in taxes, and cigarettes there would still be cheaper than in Manhattan, where a pack will set you back $14.50 these days.
The Brookings Institution alumnus then offered this conclusion, which is capped off by a not-so-subtle call to action for legislators (emphasis mine):
If we accept that tobacco tax hikes also decrease alcohol consumption, as the Washington University study shows, then it stands to reason that states with the lowest cigarette tax rates could decrease their alcohol consumption considerably by putting them on par with states with higher tobacco tax rates.
None of this is to suggest that hiking cigarette taxes is the optimal way to reduce alcohol consumption. If your policy goal is to reduce drinking, then raising alcohol taxes would be the best way to do that. However, the study does provide evidence for a rather nifty side benefit of a tobacco tax hike. Legislators grappling with these issues in the future should take heed.
Nowhere in his article did Ingraham offer a conservative or libertarian voice to argue that while government can discourage activity by hiking taxes, maybe, just maybe, it's not the government's business to play nanny with its citizenry. No, it seems Ingraham is too obsessed with the "nifty" notion of hiking taxes to cajole hard-working Americans into changing their perfectly-legal behaviors.
*For what it's worth, the digital edition headline was even more loaded, "Want people to drink less? Make their cigarettes more expensive."
