The two may be more or less equal in terms of cancer risk per quantity smoked, but there is an obvious real-world difference in that smoking a couple dozen cigarettes a day is rather more common than smoking a couple dozen joints a day.
Yeah.
Look when Prohibition came out something like half the adults were drinkers, maybe more. Today, something like 15% of adults smoke.
Now yes, Nicotine is a big bad monkey to have on your back. Some have said worse than heroin. But I am assuming that just tobacco is banned. If they leave vaping, nicotine patches, and gum, then I do not see a big issue. There would be a big market for those products, sure, and attempts to ban them also would be stupid for at least two decades.
Sure, cigs would be smuggled in, but the cost per pack would be high, and you could only smoke in private.
Yep. So far, not much risk has been shown but I do not think there are many who have smoked 40 joints a day for 20 years. 
I am well aware of how to make drinkable alcohol and probably have 10+ gallons fermenting at any one time.
Ditto with tobacco. I’m all for banning the sale of tobacco but if someone wants it enough to grow and cure themselves, well bless your heart
In the name of fighting ignorance: Violence of every type is in a steady, worldwide, decline since WWII.
Government agencies relying on taxes and small shops relying on sales are part of the problem, so it’s not a bad thing if that goes away. That said, because it’s a generational shift, the taxes and shop sales will dwindle over many years with plenty of time to do a slow-mo “pivot” into other revenue sources.
I think if it fails, it will be because you can always get an older friend to buy you smokes, or because a subsequent government changes the law. Failure will be subjective, there’s no way it will 100% stop smoking, but if it results in a massive decrease in smoking I don’t think it will have “failed”. I’m sure the political parties of the time will have a good time arguing over it. In today’s climate, it was very brief national news and now no one cares because most news is all about COVID.
That is true, but in the general public perception, violence today is worse than it has ever been. And it’s public perception that guides public policy.
But today, with all the media screaming about violence 24/7, if a ban on tobacco causes an uptick in violent deaths by, say three a night across the country, I doubt if that would put a dent in most people’s violence benumbed minds.
I think your correction is overly broad.
Yes there has been a general trend that in much of the world, in the last few decades, many forms of violent crime have plunged by typically around 50%.
The discussion on why this has happened is fascinating.
But of course it is not seen everywhere, it’s not always steady, it’s not necessarily all violent crime and the decline did not start at the same time everywhere.
This may sound like pedantry, but it matters in the current context, as the OP is making a comparison between violent crime in the US in the 1930s to now. And in this case, it is not true to say it decreased since WWII, it actually peaked in the late 80s (cite).
I’d personally give it about 50/50 with vaping available as an alternative. Sure people can grow their own just like people can make their own booze. But IMHO the investment of time and effort is a couple of orders of magnitude higher to grow something you’d be willing to inhale.
Yeah, smuggling is a thing too, but that’s just going to push prices up enough to remove all but the most hardcore users who are willing to risk fines and/or jail.
So ballpark, prohibition will remove 90% of the current user base in 10 years.
I think you underestimate the economic impact of a ban, in addition to the BILLIONS of tax revenue at all levels of government (in Cleveland “sin” tax supports sports teams arenas/stadiums, and arts) there’s also the loss of jobs at factories, shipping, sales etc.
Well, I’m talking about a real life ban enacted by a real government (New Zealand), I would assume they have calculated the impact on taxes. And as I say this is something that will happen over 60ish years, it’s not an on/off scenario.
That is a good approach. Should work out.
My high school had a student smoking area. In 1993. I don’t think vaping now is more common than smoking then.
But, if tobacco were banned, I think we’d see illegal nicotine product thrive more than black market tobacco. You don’t binge smoke. If you smoke, you want to smoke regularly throughout the day, every day. That’s hard to do if you have to conceal it. Much easier to conceal other nicotine delivery systems.
I am reading Golden Holocaust Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition , and even tho only a few chapters in, I have discovered some interesting facts and figures.
No, cig smokers will not be able to grow their own tobacco for their smoking habit.
Only about 2/3rd of what goes in a cig is actually tobacco. The rest is sugars, bronchial dilators, burn accelerators, ammonia, and of course, added nicotine.
Next, cigs are so addictive and easy to inhale as their tobacco is not just dried, but “flue cured” in a special temperature controlled, charcoal fired brick chimney, which increased the sugar content and made them easy to inhale, thus more addictive.
Also, as pointed out in the book- most drinkers during Prohibition did not want to quit drinking. However, most smokers do want to quit.
No doubt, if we have a smoking prohibition, there will be smuggling. And a few people will grow their own for pipes, etc.
And tobacco killed about a hundred million people in the 20th century. More than gunpowder.
If we allow gum, patches and even, yes vaping (at least for some time) then I see it working.
Prohibition was repealed in December 1933, so violence of “the thirties” is a little vague. If the violence was so great in the decade, was the depression a contributing factor?
The Depression didn’t help, of course. But yeah, there was plenty of violence in the twenties surrounding the underground booze trade. There was a long bloody gang war between North and Southside gangs in Chicago that culminated in the St. Valentine’s Massacre of 1929.
Hey! Anniversary coming up!