We all know that alcohol prohibition was great news for organized crime in the 1920s, and we also know that drug prohibition is causing widespread societal destruction today, but taxation also can facilitate criminal behavior. Specifically, there is considerable evidence that punitive taxes on cigarettes promote criminal activity. Here’s a video from Michigan’s Mackinac Center.

In the private sector, no business owner would be dumb enough to assume that higher prices automatically translate into proportionately higher revenues. If McDonald’s boosted hamburger prices by 30 percent, for instance, the experts at the company would fully expect that sales would decline. Depending on the magnitude of the drop, total revenue might still […]

Vincent DeMarco, president of the Maryland Citizens’ Health Initiative Education Fund, recently wrote to the Baltimore Sun to stick up for Maryland’s sin taxes.  He seems to view it as the obligation of government to reduce activities it determines to be bad: In his Commentary disparaging both Maryland’s life-saving one dollar per pack tobacco tax […]