“Hate the sin, love the sinner.” Not exactly a philosophy Maryland embraces. In fact, it’s just the opposite. Maryland loves sin. Sin taxes — levies on alcohol, tobacco, gambling and more — keep our coffers filled for legislators to abuse.

The power to tax is the power to destroy, and that’s the idea with alcohol. Alcohol has been the favorite target of well-meaning civic folks ever since Methuselah. Recently, the crusade against drinking has been gathering momentum. The latest target has been what are called flavored malt beverages or alcopops as the disparaging term calls them.

Last week, Gov. Martin O’Malley did something smart on the issue — nothing. The General Assembly had passed a law keeping these drinks taxed just like beer — cheaper than higher-proof alcohol. O’Malley didn’t bend to pressure from the anti-alcohol scolds, but didn’t sign it either. He simply let it become law.

This was good news for bar owners beset by increased sales taxes and ridiculous smoking laws. This enabled the status quo to remain — for now. Future-Gov.-In-His-Own-Mind Doug Gansler, temporarily attorney general, had ruled the drinks should be taxed as alcohol. They are mostly malt — or beerlike — but logic never creeps into Annapolis.

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I’m not the ideal spokesman for flavored malt beverages. Other than a few embarrassing wine cooler incidents in the ’80s, I never drink the stuff. I’d rather have soft lemonade than Mike’s harder version. I’m drinking Diet Mountain Dew while I write this, so my judgment is skewed.

But many people do like the drinks, and watching the anti-industry lobby use this as one more way to attack a legal product makes me mad enough to, well, drink.

We keep making use of legal products harder and harder. The mandatory health crowd cracked down on smoking for our own good and now goes after alcohol and food. Air might be next.

I was an intern in Annapolis for much of the debate about raising the drinking age decades ago. I watched Mothers Against Drunk Driving get MADD and limit a perfect legal product from people old enough to vote and go to war. Now MADD wants to tax it to death as well.

MADD is one of these groups you aren’t supposed to criticize. It has more than 600 chapters around the U.S. and several other nations. And it claims to want to save lives by stopping drunken driving. But MADD cares little about anything other than its own agenda like restricting alcohol ads — your freedoms, not so much.

MADD wants to tax flavored malt beverages enough to discourage their use, claiming young folks drink them too much. Like young people need motivation to drink.

But it is correct in saying taxation will limit drinking of the alcopops. A study from the German Federal Center for Health Education in Cologne said as much. It also said teens turned instead to harder liquor and while the flavored malt beverages declined.

That’s the funny thing about sin. You can make people alter their behavior, but seldom the way you’d expect.