Is people drinking alcohol a loss for society? Because the thing is, society needs to continue to produce children in order to continue existing. It's called a social lubricant for a reason, and while it is exceeding obvious that alcohol abuse is a problem, that's exactly why the state runs the liquor stores. To limit products available and limit hours to ideally prevent the worst of abuses. So the unanswerable question is, how many children is alcohol ultimately responsible for? If it were successfully banned (using magic) would civilization survive past the end of the incoming generation? Given alcohol's ubiquity on all corners of the globe, I don't think that's decided or even decidable.
As we're only considering children being born, the health effects of alcohol while pregnant are known, (aka fetal alcohol syndrome) but since they're known, they can be dismissed if we assume pregnant mothers aren't drinking. The other thing we can discount is the long term health effects of alcohol consumption. Yes there are health ramifications, but as long as people are able to create healthy babies, what happens later on in life is less relevant to the question of making babies, which civilization needs in order to continue.
>how many children is alcohol ultimately responsible for?
If this is alluding to unplanned pregnancies, that is almost unheard of nowadays due to access to IUDs/morning after pill/abortion.
Whether or not alcohol, or specifically hard alcohol, plays a material role in establishing relationships that otherwise would not happen is difficult to discern, but I don't see why an alcohol tax (or even just higher liquor taxes) would dissuade people. It only takes a few drinks to become "buzzed", so any tax would only be material to heavy drinkers.
I don't see how a government run liquor store limits abuse, and most seem to offer the same products as any other store (does it really make a difference above a certain proof?). And many states limit hours that alcohol is sold without having government run stores.
I was referring to alcohol as a social lubricant leading to relationships leading to children. If we look to Asia, and at South Korea and Japan's issues with existentially low birth rates, the question flips. From "would an alcohol tax possibly dissuade people from hooking up" to "what can the government do to help more babies be born", and under that framing, subsidizing alcohol to everyone of baby making age starts to look almost reasonable.
As far state run liquor stores dissuading alcoholism, Scandinavian countries state-run their liquor stores for that expressed reason. Their hours are intentionally bad, the products expensive and small. No 1.75 L handles of 80 proof vodka to be found. It's mostly effective, but it's also not New England where if you just drive for an hour or two, you can hit multiple states and jurisdictions with different blue laws, limiting the effectiveness of state run stores.
What state run stores, ostensibly force, is better adherence with the law. The corner shop where you've gone to for twenty years and are friends with the owner, is totally just gonna give you beer Sunday morning when it's illegal to do so, but record it in the system on Monday. A bit harder to do in a state run store with more oversight. Also, it's harder to import prohibited kinds of alcohol with said. oversight vs a privately run store. As with any law though, it's not 100% effective, but that's not a reason to not have a law.
As we're only considering children being born, the health effects of alcohol while pregnant are known, (aka fetal alcohol syndrome) but since they're known, they can be dismissed if we assume pregnant mothers aren't drinking. The other thing we can discount is the long term health effects of alcohol consumption. Yes there are health ramifications, but as long as people are able to create healthy babies, what happens later on in life is less relevant to the question of making babies, which civilization needs in order to continue.