If you’re talking about a sales tax equivalent to any other OTC food or drug, I have no problem with that. Taxes ought to be linked to cost. In order to have trade, we require a working legal system and transportation networks, therefore we need sales tax (or some other form of tax). I have no problem with that.
However, if you believe we should tax things just because they’re pleasurable, then that’s defective thinking.
Alcohol is severely harmful to society. It actually kills people just from consuming it, and causes chronic severe disease. It puts heavy load on the criminal justice system because it makes people act violently and destructively. It has a very heavy, quantifiable cost to society that pot does not have.
Even if any of this were true (most of it is not), the costs are almost insignificant.
That’s not the point. The point isn’t that we should tax consumers more just because we can. The point is that anything that is harmless and free should be taxed no greater than anything else that is harmless and free just because some people have a moral disagreement with it.