I'm not commenting on the morality of sin tax and yes it does hit poor people the hardest, but I also think it has been a huge deterrent. If you want to change people's behavior, hit them in the wallet. I would like to believe the education element did it all by itself but that just doesn't seem likely. During the same period, the war on drugs unleashed an almost equal amount of anti-drug propaganda, and I don't think there is evidence that it caused people to smoke less weed, for instance.
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