If memory serves, that's a line from Brideshead Revisited, when Lady Marchmain dresses down Charles Ryder for deliberately giving her alcoholic son money for drink.
A story about how a Taiwanese local government similarly subsidizes alcoholism, from Monday's China Post:
Magistrate Lee Chu-feng said the "KKL liquor vouchers" — which allows each resident to get NT$3,600 [about $100 U.S.] worth of the products of Kinmen Kaoliang Liquor, Inc. (KKL) — are a bounty to all people living and working on the islets under the jurisdiction of the county government.
[. . .]
Magistrate Lee said 85,143 residents are entitled to the vouchers.
The fund comes from the profits of Kinmen Kaoliang Liquor, which is owned by the county government. [emphasis added]
Fortunately, the Kinmen county government doesn't own shares in the local heroin business. That they're willing to publicize, anyways.
A year or two back I went back to my home town, and was taken aback to see a liquor store RIGHT NEXT DOOR to a homeless shelter in the downtown. Now, I'm about as pro-capitalist as they come, but anybody who'd open a liquor store next to a homeless shelter has got a pretty black heart.
And that goes ditto for any government that does essentially the same thing.
UPDATE: I'm fairly certain I've misquoted Evelyn Waugh for the title. The "heartlessly wickedly cruel" part is right, though.