Tobacco smoking may become to this decade what boozing was to the Prohibition era -- a crime conceived to change social behavior by law.
The criminalizing of tobacco smoking has already started. Cities, states, provinces, and yes, even whole countries, are diligently enacting partial bans, backed with fines for violations. Tobacco companies are so deluged with lawsuits that some have moved their operations off-shore. Smoking is incessantly demonized by media of every stripe, feeding a public mood for anti-smoking legislation, including a total ban. The time is nearly right for creating a new crime.
Currently, governments, the tobacco industry, and the health industry benefit hugely from smoking, but to criminalize smoking requires that all three not suffer financially. This is the bottom line for a total ban.
Governments have stumbled onto a cash cow called gambling. Add gasoline and liquor taxes. Many states and provinces have increased tobacco taxes, presumably to make cigarettes so costly that people will quit. It works, but it's also a last, crass, cash grab before legislation.
Governments tell us these "sin" taxes are needed to meet rising health care costs, especially costs attributable, at least in part, to tobacco use. Health care is an enormous industry and it's growing. It employs many thousands of people. It pays thousands of mortgages and keeps kids in Pampers and X-Boxes. Whether smoking is made a crime or not, health care costs will continue to rise.
A few years ago, a European study found that smokers put fewer demands on health care systems than non-smokers because they die sooner. That reasoning suggests a total ban would be like a dip in the road to be followed by a steep climb up a hill with no end in sight.
That leaves the tobacco companies. Basically, they can no longer hand-hold the dwindling number of North American smokers. The market is sour, too much hassle already. For years the companies have been focussing on Asia. The market is bigger, more receptive, and more profitable.
For the three vested interests, then, criminalizing smoking will have neutral financial impact. Then the voting general public can be comfortably satisfied.
What are the risks of criminalizing tobacco smoking?
History shows us there are some dangers to using legislation to dictate social behavior. Liquor prohibition is a classic example. Not only did people continue to drink after the passing of the Volstead Act, they drank more. Worse, distribution and much of the manufacturing of liquor became the preserve of real criminals. Revenues provided the investment capital that existing criminal factions needed to become organized.
How about gambling? For many years, it was a criminal activity, but that didn't stop people from blowing their paychecks. Making it a crime did give the crooks a big leg up to wealth and power, to say nothing of financing diversification into other criminal activity like loan sharking and money laundering.
The much heralded War on Drugs continues its uphill battle in North American streets while drug abuse increases, and criminal distributors, growers, and manufacturers continue to flourish. Drug laws have resulted in creation of income bases that exceed the Gross National Product of some countries.
Clearly, there are such things as bad laws. A blanket prohibition of tobacco may be one. Indeed, the incidence of high taxes on cigarettes has already turned cigarette smuggling and bootlegging into a multi-million dollar-a-year business. Moreover, indications are that this activity fosters smuggling of drugs and weapons, as well as human trafficking, by using the new channels opened by cigarette smugglers.
Just as health workers and politicians will continue to drive their gas-guzzling SUV's, so a few hardy smokers will continue to light up. The day of neighborhood "smokeasies" may not be far off.
