Quotes from FDR team on re-imposing alcohol tax in late 1933, with the message of start with low taxes:
Topic (sentence fragment): “The assurance by tax adjustment and other means of an adequate supply of inexpensive legal alcoholic beverages which will be able to drive out the illegal competing production by price competition.”
Discussion: “The attempts to control this illegal industry solely by policing the production and sale of illegal alcoholic beverages have not been wholly satisfactory. The enforcement problems of the prohibition period will still remain in those States which continue to be dry after the repeal of the eighteenth amendment. It is believed that the price of legal liquor to the ultimate consumer in the post-prohibition period will be one of the important factors in determining the success or failure of the general effort to eliminate the illegal industry.”
Source: Report to the Secretary of the Treasury of Recommendations of Informal Interdepartmental Committee Relative to Taxation and Control of Alcoholic Beverages, Supplement to Tax on Intoxicating Liquor, Hearings Before the Committee on Ways and Means, House of Representatives and the Committee on Finance, United States Senate, 73d Congress, Interim, 1st and 2d Sessions (Dec. 11-14, 1933), page 308.
The Center for New Revenue 