Prohibition never works, but the antis are trying hard

The Royal College of Physicians in London, England issued a report last week that suggested ways in which tobacco smoking could be eliminated in Great Britain in20 years. The usual mix of extremely-heightened taxes and limiting exposure was suggested, along with the formation of a new governmental agency (of course) to regulate products with nicotine in them.

Our comment on CigarCyclopedia.com for September 11 included this historical perspective:

The Royal College of Physicians missile nowhere mentions making smoking illegal, but making it anti-social, hard to find and prohibitively expensive. Alcoholic-beverage Prohibition in the U.S. didn’t make drinking illegal either, but prohibited its manufacture, transport or sale.

When Prohibition came to America in 1920, 33 of the then-48 states were already dry. While not quite at the same level, Pennsylvania became the 25th state to adopt indoor smoking bans which became effective today. But national (alcoholic beverage) Prohibition failed in just 13 years because people wanted to drink. Tobacco prohibition will fail – as it has before – because there are plenty of people who want to smoke.

It’s not widely remembered that tobacco prohibition was also tried in the U.S. less than a century ago. In Gordon Dillow’s excellent article called "Thank You For Not Smoking" for American Heritage in 1981, he noted that cigarette sales were banned by state law in Oklahoma in 1901, followed in later years by Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin. Of these 13 states with cigarette prohibitions, six had repealed their laws by 1917 and ten had dropped the subject by 1921. Utah was the last to give up the fight in 1923.

The chief campaigner against tobacco was an Illinois woman named Lucy Paige Gaston, whose efforts were similar to those of the more-famous Carrie Nation against alcoholic beverages. But having failed, as Nation did, in her try at prohibition, Gaston ironically died of throat cancer in 1924.

The Spanish philosopher George Santayana wrote in Reason in Common Sense (1905), "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." It appears the anti-tobacco activists are ready to relive another failure over the succeeding 20 years.

Comments

[Rebecca]

Thank you for writing this article. I am furious about the propaganda that is fueling smoking bans. I am also tired of being ostracized for enjoying smoking. Keep up the fight!

[mandy]

I would also like to thank you, I read something you wrote about just recently, very impressed and posted it on our campaign web-site - http://www.freedom2choose.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=61367#61367
page 48 (we are not criminals)

This is also a great article written by Gian (forces.org)
http://www.freedom2choose.info/news1.php?id=791
The drunken crocodile
Gian Turci
12th September 2008.
Enjoy
We know this is not going to stop at just smoking, alcohol is next. Prohibition did not work the first time around, only for the real criminals.