What do alcohol, tobacco and gambling have in common?

On the one hand, they have been viewed as “sinful” activities, perhaps bringing immediate pleasure to the partaker but health and social costs in the long run. Governments look to prohibit or limit such scurrilous consumption.

On the other hand, these sinful activities are also common favourites for taxation. In Gulliver’s Travels, a Lagado island professor argues for “effectual ways and means of raising money without grieving the subject,” which, of course, would be to justly tax “vices and folly.”

Sin taxes have become a major focus for public policy this year. Ontario Premier Doug Ford is promoting “a buck a beer” in the province. Alberta is being sued for violating Section 121 of the Constitution for protecting its small craft brewers. The Supreme Court came down with a monopoly-protecting decision in the Comeau case that resulted in charging a New Brunswicker for loading up the trunk of his car with 14 cases of beer purchased in Quebec.

With legalization of cannabis, a new source of revenue promises to be lucrative to governments as well.

Carbon taxes are also a form of “sin” taxation to discourage GHG emissions through consumption and production.