Yes they could have done it with just segwit and Stamps does it without segwit as does color coins, but taproot did allow them to script them in using the manner that they do.

The larger point, is that shitcoiners are gonna shitcoin and that we should be upfront about all of the impacts a BIP might have when having community discussion about it.

Even larger point to me, we should not shut down a BIP purely on the basis of shitcoin enablement if that BIP has massive benefits to us. On the other hand, shutting down a BIP whose only use case is shitcoin enablement is understandable.