Yes you can use But,
Are you expecting them to populate in dialog box like tags field does ?, It wont work in this case
OR
You just want set property to for some other purpose. It should be fine.
I hope you have replicated all code successfully to publish instance. Now when you execute this code in publish, can you manually go to that path and check for this property ( If you have access ) meanwhile when you execute code for this KEEP EYE on logs of publish instance.
Let me know what you see. One more, is there any special case why u want use "cq:tags"?, as you are free to use your any custom property name.