The question about whether Prohibition was stupid got me to thinking. I think there would be far more of a push to ban tobacco completely if it weren’t for the failure of Prohibition.
Is the failure of Prohibition useful in that it keeps us from indiscriminately banning stuff that the health and moral do-gooders think people should be kept from? Tobacco is a feasible example. So is meat. Perhaps even gun control laws are stymied by the debacle of Prohibition.
But if that’s true, what about the bans on recreational drugs?
Tobacco is a horrible example, because lots of people smoke and the nannystateism of wanting to control people’s self-destructive habits won’t fly in general. Which is the same reason that you can’t ban meat (:rolleyes:), not because of some lingering memory of prohibition.
As you note, prohibition is still quite alive and well. If you don’t believe it, try walking down a street in the center of town smoking a joint. Obviously, we’re not at all reticent (as a nation) about prohibition as long as it’s applied to substances that we want banned.
I agree with what you say, but I do think that if Prohibition had never happened, there would be a far more vocal movement to ban all tobacco products. And the recreational drug laws would be held up as an example in favor of banning tobacco. “We banned marijuana. Tobacco is far more addictive, so we should ban it too.”
Yes, lots of people like to smoke. Plenty of folks liked to drink liquor in 1919.
I would hazard a guess that if the original prohibition were still in effect, and effective at its purpose, then people would be blowing off steam with other methods, guess whats left.
Your point regarding tobbacco, you will notice that in quite a few jurisdictions, that the taxes on smokes have taken the word obscene to a new level, for which i can guess that a number of our dopers are just fine with.
Since the purpose of the taxes is two fold, in keeping with the spirit of the original post and not hijacking, is cut down on the amount of smokers , thus side stepping prohibition v3.0 and at the same time raking in those obscene taxes.
While we know that politicians view long range planning as a week or less, economically there seems to be a math issue with regards to how much money they can be reasonably be exepected to rake, while at the same time , the smoking population decreases.
somethings gotta give, either shifting the taxes to something or somebody else, or increase the amount of consumers.
But if the fact that some people want to consume something was enough to keep it legal, then all recreational drugs would be legal. But our legal system is based on the principle of people telling other people what to do.
Not really. Two reasons off the top of my head. First off, the numbers of people who use some sort of tobacco product are much more than those who use recreational drugs, especially historically in the US (no stats on this, just my gut feeling…alcohol of course being an exception, since I think just about everyone drank like fish back in the day). Second, tobacco doesn’t cause the sorts of impairments that drugs (or alcohol) does, and has only recently become more of a taboo substance, mainly due to the fact that we are now living long enough for it to become a problem. This is important (IMHO) because the reason alcohol was banned (and recreational drugs are still banned today) has to do with their less savory impact on The Family™ and society in general. Tobacco, however, merely kills you slowly and generally late in life, so it’s not really on the same radar as drugs and booze…IMHO of course.
I don’t think it has (historically, and until very recently) ever really even occurred to the public at large to prohibit tobacco use, so again in light of the OP, I’m not seeing how Prohibition has even peripherally impacted the subject one way or the other.
The tobacco industry has bought off the government. It pays (or smokers pay) huge amounts of taxes, government is a full partner in the tobacco industry. Neither the federal nor any state nor county nor city government could do without the tax revenue tobacco provides.
Perhaps my thread title is misleading. I certainly don’t think the memory of Prohibition is the ONLY reason we haven’t banned tobacco products. But c’mon, the big fat failure of the Noble Experiment was a lesson about using legislation to enforce morality. After all, we’ve banned recreational drugs, many of which were actually legal for a long time. And quite widely used. Heroin was intended to be a safer alternative than morphine, which hundreds of Civil War veterans were hooked on.
Let’s say that Prohibition was defeated in 1919. Never happened, but all the restrictions on marijuana, cocaine, heroin, etc. did happen, and remained in place exactly as today. Why wouldn’t the militant health types that abound in this nation be demanding that we entirely ban tobacco? They’ve already chased smoking out nearly all public places, even restaurants and bars. Employers are beginning to demand that their workers quit. Not just take that cigarette outside but quit.
What makes you think that these types wouldn’t be calling for a national Prohibition of Tobacco if there weren’t a fiasco of an original Prohibition of liquor to demonstrate that it wouldn’t work?
I’m sure the memory of Prohibition is a factor, but on the other hand other Western countries don’t have total tobacco bans either, and they never had alcohol prohibition.
The United States is a major grower of tobacco, so if the plant was illegal, there would be a lot of people out of work and a major industry down the tubes.
I like the approach, educate the public, greater and graphic health warnings on cigarette packs, prohobitions on where people can smoke, and most importantly, just make the shit so expensive that people, especially young people will not smoke. Because of these measures, the number of people addicted to tobacco has declined yearly since the 1980’s in the USA.
Americans, stop smoking. But grow tobacco and sell it to other countries.
No its the thing telling people to do it in a more gradual way rather than an outright ban.
I posted this the other day on another board:
"A new round of strict anti-smoking laws come into effect in September, but authorities are already looking at implementing even stricter measures to target smokers.
The next step could be forcing addicts to get their cigarettes on prescription, said Western Australia’s first Director General of Health and prominent anti-smoking advocate, Mike Daube."
Ie restrict in areas, then gradually tighten more and more as less and less smokers are left.
Rabid anti-smoker btw, but this approach and end goal reeks a bit to me, if you’ll pardon the pun.
Prohibition happened because women started to be able to vote and they were tired of dealing with drunk husbands. Drunk husbands being abusive and being crappy providers, at a time when women depended on men financially in ways that are hard to imagine today. Guys aren’t beating up their wives and losing there jobs because they smoke.
That sort of ban on tobacco sounds like a way to recover narco-dollars from Central and South America - but perhaps at the cost of heavily armed gangs of Kentucky tobacco farmers waging war against North Carolina growers.
One difference with tobacco is that it was originally identified as a personal health issue. This is changing somewhat with increased awareness of the dangers of passive smoking, but even this, I think, will not change the basic equation. As smoking bans continue to spread, the exposure of the general population to second-hand smoke will diminish to the point where it will be hard for anyone to get worked up about it.
The approach to prohibiting alcohol and all the other recreational drugs was different. The argument was that they made you do things that directly hurt other people. Drinkers beat their wives and starved their kids, so the argument implied. Users of other “narcotics” turned into axe murderers, or would be so numbed to pain that bullets would not stop them. There were some people who believed that cocaine, for example, gave its users superhuman strength and made them unstoppable monsters.
Not as long as the government makes $billions in tobacco taxes.
Plus, cigarettes are a big export for the USA-we are quite willing to export lung cancer and early death to the 3rd world.
Makes our stance on drugs kinds hypocritical, though.
You don’t suppose that it could be that there are still a number of people who enjoy tobacco products, could it?