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In theory it is a great idea. If I was 'god' and could go back in time to change one thing, well, I would change a lot of things. Nevertheless, one of those changes would be banning alcohol.
However, as it is cemented in society, it would be impossible to ban it now. As mentioned above.
Unfortunately it is easy to say we need to 'control'. However to actually get clubs to limit their trading hours would not happen at all. Even raising taxes would be impossible. The crux of it is, alcohol is here to stay and there is not much we can do about. It's a cultural thing and it is hard to change culture. You just cannot say 'drink responsibility', most people do... however it is the minority that do the wrong thing.
My personal view, as per smokes, tax the **** out of it. Let the social costs = tax revenue. This seems like a harsh view and letting the minority ruin it for the rest of society.
These may be old figures so I apologise, I'm writing this on the fly.
Tax revenue from Alcohol is $5.5 billion where social cost is $15.3 billion. Therefore alcohol taxes should be raised by 3x to compensate this.
Tobacco tax revenue is close to $5.43b (from projected figures). The social cost is $31.5 billion and as the majority of the social cost is under the medical costs, medicare costs ~18billion a year. Tobacco taxes should be raised higher than the social cost of 31.5 billion to $35b. This way, smokers actually subsidize medicare.
Although this is nice in theory, it is doubtful that it would happen.
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