The government coffers must be a bit low, pick something the majority of people enjoy enough that they won't stop, and shove a bit more tax on it under the guise of being worried for our health.
Anyway, raising the price, will I stop? No. I don't sit in bus stops knocking back hooch, I do however like going to a pub or a bar and having a drink and socialising, or having a couple in a club.
Interestingly enough the price difference is already such across the country that in some places the prices cold end up verging on the ludicrous. I mean handing over a note at the bar and not getting any change for a pint mad. Which may stop people drinking (but not the ones they want to stop, rather people like myself and much of the rest of the population), but will also cause whatever withered faith the populaous has in the government to curl up and die. At best they'd be seen as even more of a laughing stock and at worst frauds, and perhaps if this kind of thing is to believed, some kind of governmental highway man, demanding money with menaces in an even more obvious way than usual.