e purpose of the government not to
interfere * * * with the trade nominally licensed, if the required taxes
are paid." Whether the "licensed" trade shall be permitted at all is a
question for decision by the State.[261] This, nevertheless, does not
signify that Congress may not often regulate to some extent a business
within a State in order the more effectively to tax it. Under the
necessary and proper clause, Congress may do this very thing. Not only
has the Court sustained regulations concerning the packaging of taxed
articles such as tobacco[262] and oleomargarine,[263] ostensibly
designed to prevent fraud in the collection of the tax; it has also
upheld measures taxing drugs[264] and firearms[265] which prescribed
rigorous restrictions under which such articles could be sold or
transferred, and imposed heavy penalties upon persons dealing with them
in any other way. These regulations were sustained as conducive to the
efficient collection of the tax though they clearly transcended in some
respects this ground of justification.

Extermination by Taxation

A problem of a different order is presented where the tax itself has the
effect of suppressing an activity or where it is coupled with
regulations which clearly have no possible relation to the collection of
the tax. Where a tax is imposed unconditionally, so that no other
purpose appears on the face of the statute, the Court has refused to
inquire into the motives of the lawmakers and has sustained the tax
despite its prohibitive proportions.[266] In the language of a recent
opinion: "It is beyond serious question that a tax does not cease to be
valid merely because it regulates, discourages, or even definitely
deters the activities taxed. * * * The principle applies even though the
revenue obtained is obviously negligible, * * *, or the revenue purpose
of the tax may be secondary, * * * Nor does a tax statute necessarily
fall because it touches on activities which Congress might not otherwise
regulate. As was pointed out in Magnano Co. _v._ Hamilton, 292 U.S. 40,
47 (1934): 'From the beginning of our government, the courts have
sustained taxes although imposed with the collateral intent of effecting
ulterior ends which, considered apart, were beyond the constitutional
power of the lawmakers to realize by legislation directly addressed to
their accomplishment.'"[267] But where the tax is conditional, and may
be avoided by compliance with regulations set out in