Let’s Make It Illegal: That’ll Stop It!

I am not, and never have been, a smoker, but sometimes I find myself thinking things are far worse than I thought. This week was one of those times.

In an echo of a flabbergasting report frome the BMA that tobacco should be made illegal, there comes a survey that shows that a large proportion of people in Britain think it should be banned as well. This opinion says more about misplaced belief in the rule of law than it does attitudes to smoking, and it illustrates why I’m convinced that in hundreds of years time people will look back on The War On Drugs (and perhaps the War on Smoking?) as baffling as the obsession with witchcraft, alchemy or religious schism in ages past.

No British goverment would ever legislate to make tobacco illegal, for much the same reasons as they’ll never honestly make “drugs” legal. Making tobacco illegal would unleash huge negative consequences on society, while making drugs legal would do pretty much the positve oppposite. The goverment and the economies it supports relies upon the