ABSTRACT
Economists are more involved in trying to determine the consequences of policies rather than prescribing what policies should be adopted. The logic of this argument implies that if a solitary individual wishes to drink heavily, even to the point of premature death, that is his own business and the state is not justified in intervening. Heavy drinking, like smoking, also imposes costs on national health services and this gives the state a financial interest in altering these patterns of consumption. The risk of ‘regressiveness’ in this sense is greatest in the case of beer, which is traditionally the workingman’s drink in Northern Europe. The traditional British alcohol excise taxes are heavier per litre of alcohol in spirits than in beer. In the United States, failure to adjust federal alcohol taxes during the current inflation has resulted in a steady fall in the real level of the tax.
