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'Incredible' milestone reached as Sweden becomes a smoke-free country
(www.thelocal.com)
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this post was submitted on 25 May 2026
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Prohibition was unpopular. Smoking bans are popular. So it's not a very good analogy.
Prohibition was ridiculously popular until it wasn't. Just like smoking bans will be.
People will choose to smoke just because it's illegal, and it will unironically be a gateway to harder drugs since the same guy selling tobacco will now be the same guy selling crack.
It failed because of widespread lawbreaking, organized crime, enforcement failures, and economic pressure (tax and jobs during the great depression)
Smoking is already on the decline, i don't think you'll find such fervor for cigarette running.
There is, in some countries with very high taxes on tobacco.
You're wrong, it will also have widespread lawbreaking, enforcement failures, economic pressure, and create a new organized crime powerhouse. As always.
The smoking market is comparable to the drug market in size of users... how's that drug war doing?
You're wrong!
see how easy that is?
It’s a good analogy, because nicotine is a drug and smokers as addicts will seek it out whether or not it’s illegal.
A non-addictive drug like THC is a good comparison, as the legalization within the US is a big source of tax revenue and the period when it was more illegal made it a staple of cartels, which smuggled it into the states.
When criminals run an enterprise, they inevitably use their resources to undermine government and commit more crime. That’s the true nature of prohibition.
Prohibition of any item, meaning, making the item illegal to make or possess anywhere, is a stronger infringement on personal freedom and often leads to organized crime stepping in to provide the prohibited item, both of which make it unpopular.
Popular smoking bans generally ban smoking in certain public areas. This does not promote organized crime to sell the banned product, and is less of an infringement on personal freedom.
The proposal to “ban cigarettes” sounds like it would fall under the former category .
Yep.
Prohibition does not prevent. Prohibition makes the good things bad and the bad things worse.
"Controlled substance" they say. How Orwellian. Handing it over to the black market, with no control but [criminal] market forces. How controlled.
"We said don't do it.", like that works. Generally, good people do not obey bad rules, and bad people do not obey rules either.
Then there's the forbidden fruit effect. Then the profiteering and price-hike for risk, and in absence of regulation oft coming in the most harmful polluted forms of whatever's been turned into contraband. Dangerous combination.
Normalisation of controlling people's behaviour's an even deeper bag of rant bait yet, than just via banning substances, slippery sloping via banning delivery methods.
Funny how prohibition and "public relations" [e.g. as per Ed Bernay's Crystallising Public Opinion] came into being at around the same time. Prohibition wouldn't work without the accompanying psyop? Due reconsideration of the popularity of bans. ... Especially in light of realising "Prohibition does not prevent. Prohibition makes the good things bad and the bad things worse."