Not the OP, but my argument would be that things should either be legal or illegal. Fine if stuff has a naturally high price, everyone can't have a Tesla or a

Not the OP, but my argument would be that things should either be legal or illegal. Fine if stuff has a naturally high price, everyone can't have a Tesla or a Ferrari, but if something is deemed to be morally OK (and therefore legal), it's not the government's place to then penalising people for spending their money on it. If taxes from cigarettes and alcohol were ring-fenced purely for treating smokers, prevention campaigns & alcohol anonymous programmes etc then I might be in favour. But for example — supposedly treating smokers costs the NHS £2.5bn per year (https://twitter.com/UKHSA/status/887261639720001536 https://twitter.com/UKHSA/status/887261639720001536), but the duty on cigarettes brings in £9.9bn (https://www.statista.com/statistics/284329/tobacco-duty-united-kingdom-hmrc-tax-receipts/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/284329/tobacco-duty-unit...). For alcohol — the overall budget of the NHS is ~£130bn currently. This article (2016) estimated that alcohol related cases cost the NHS 3.6% of its budget (https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2016/jan/22/alcohol-and-the-nhs-five-key-questions https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2016/jan/22/alcoho...) which, assuming the same now would be £4.7bn today, but alcohol duty brings in £12bn (https://www.statista.com/statistics/284336/united-kingdom-hmrc-tax-receipts-alcohol-duties-by-type/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/284336/united-kingdom-hm...). Even accounting for other costs (e.g. accidents), the government is making a huge return on allowing these products to be sold, so it seems hypocritical to then punish people for using them, especially if people want to enjoy them in moderation.