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Comment by inglor_cz | Hacker News Reader

> Increase taxes on alcohol

Illegal production of homebrewn alcohol is a thing and has been for centuries. Raising taxes at will does not mean that everyone will, unhappily, continue to buy expensive alcohol in the store. There is a limit after which people will start to produce their own moonshine, which is less safe than whatever you buy legally. Or start drinking various chemicals that resemble alcohol. (Window cleaner is a big hit.)

The problems with War on Drugs translate neatly to any possible War on Alcohol as well: the black market will kick in once it has a good business case to exist, and all sort of problems will come with its emergence.

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And yet Scandinavian countries have had great success by raising the price and limiting the availability of store-bought alcohol.

I think this is similar to some UX patterns we see in software: most people will go with the default option because it is easier. Raising the amount of effort needed for something means fewer people will end up doing it.

Finland and Sweden aren't exactly sober places. Finland also has one of the highest suicides in Europe and alcohol abuse sure plays into this. Sweden isn't a role-model either by criminalizing abuse and making alcohol expensive. It does nothing but make it a "prestige object".

Nordic countries: https://www.statista.com/statistics/693505/per-capita-consum...

> And yet Scandinavian countries have had great success by raising the price and limiting the availability of store-bought alcohol.

Great success?

1. People there still buy a lot, even at expensive prices.

2. I have never seen so much heavy consumption and problems in Southern Europe than what I saw living in Finland.

3. I had never seen people brewing their own wine in their flat in my country (not counting real wine in farms when I was a kid, of course). Youngsters wouldn't even use berries like their elders, but just sugar & yeast (bearing the suiting name of 'kilju').

4. You could sometimes illicitly buy moonshine alcohol from a car trunk on a car park, in plastic water bottles. Classy.

5. Anecdote: I remember vodka was smuggled from Russia in timber lorries (trunks were hollowed out and filled with bottles) :-D

This corresponds to my tourist experience. Compared to Italy or Spain, Finland has a lot of people with an obvious drink problem.

Maybe it is in the wine vs. vodka difference; vodka, being much more concentrated, will wreak havoc on internal organs sooner. Including brain and liver.

Not sure what you mean by "success"? In Finland at least so many people (especially from the south) regularly (pre-COVID at least) take the ferry to Estonia to buy alcohol in bulk because of the insanely high alcohol taxes. If that option didn't exist I'd expect moonshine (and/or illegal exports) to become much more common.

Folks in Norway would go to Sweden pre-COVID to buy alcohol. The in-country alcohol sales rose enough post-covid that the government is actually lowering the taxes on alcohol slightly, though whether it is enough to keep folks buying in Norway is debatable. I'd not be surprised if there wasn't a thriving black market even with all this.

A few years ago the government in Estonia raised taxes a bit too much on alcohol. The result was that Estonians started going to Latvia to buy alcohol. I believe even a lot of Finns are (or were) now buying alcohol from Latvia. Even alcohol that's made in Estonia is cheaper in Latvia.

There were some additional effects to this as well. Food is also cheaper in Latvia. Some people ended up doing a lot of their grocery shopping in Latvia as, because they were already there for be alcohol.

Politically, the Social Democrats got most of the blame for the tax increase. They had a large drop in votes in the most recent parliamentary election.

Thanks for the details/clarifications! I haven't lived in Finland for a couple of years so haven't really stayed up to date.

See https://ourworldindata.org/alcohol-consumption#historical-pe...

Seems like people in Nordic countries (especially when not considering Denmark) consume less alcohol than their neighbours, although the difference has been decreasing.

The problem with sin taxes is that they even further increase the divide between rich and poor.

The wealthy won't be concerned if they're spending twice as much on booze, as it's such a small fraction of their income. But the working class may be denied one of their few pleasures - even if they were perfectly capable of keeping their consumption at reasonably healthy level.

Even worse than taxing alcohol is trying reduce car use by taxing people off the roads (without significantly improving alternatives). That's taking away vast numbers of opportunities from those who need them the most.

You can get a beer case in germany for as low as 5€ - 10€ for something mildly decent - that's 24 bottles of 0.5L beer.

As much as I enjoy my beer every other day it's crazy. Double that and pay for rehab/hospital costs with that money.

That would be 35-40€ (cheapest brands) in Finland. This is why booze runs to Estonia (much lower taxes) are so common.

That would definitely not be doable in bavaria.

Sure, there will be some illegally produced alcohol. The majority of the alcohol consuming public will start consuming less alcohol. So that's no reason not to tax it, is it? What you're suggesting is like saying we shouldn't forbid some random crime because people will commit it regardless.

My solution: Increase taxes on all alcoholic beverages. Make pharmacies able to sell 20% by volume alcohol mixed with water that is drinkable in non-branded, medical-looking bottles. Addicts with little money can buy that and mix it with fruit juice or whatever, and everyone else buys the expensive real stuff.

Alcohol is big business, though. Forcing pricess too high would be the end of most pubs/bars and many restaurants. And we're losing many of them already due to Covid.

If taxes were really high, I suspect that home brewing would be become far more popular, too.

The great experiment aka prohibition in the USA shows how that worked out.

What's too high? Alcohol is heavily taxed in the nordic countries with a single beer costing 10-20 dollars in a bar. A single long-drink can be 20-40 dollars. There are still plenty of bars and people getting drunk. Yes, there is home brewing but it's not what the young kids do to have fun and get drunk.

You can read about the taxation and the effects of a tax cut in this paper from 2018, https://www.alko.fi/INTERSHOP/static/WFS/Alko-OnlineShop-Sit...

This will only create a black market of booze. Brewing, and distilling alcohol, is a fairly easy endeavour. Policies like you've suggested, are why illicit moonshine and poitin exist.

Tax aspect of your post aside

Everclear already exists. Not going to get much cheaper than that w/regards to diluting it in fruit juice or whatever else.

40's also quite affordably exist.

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