RENURKS
    Mwk Edward Lender
    Prohibition Anniversary Lunch
    Ile "21 " Club
    New York City
    January 16, 1995
    I think you'll agree that there's no better place to recognize today's 75Eh Anniversary
    of Prohibition titan right here. After all, this is the place where New York's business and
    political elite ignored the 18th amendment. This is the house that bootleg booze built.
    Today IS a tremendously significant date in our history. When America woke up this
    morning 75 years ago, it was illegal to make, sell or transport booze. Such a sweeping edict
    would be inconceivable today. Or would it?
    The "21" Club is strong proof of the so-called "noble experiment's" failure.
    10, Everyone learried then what we all know now: Prohibition doesn't work.
    It invites government into private lives.
    ù It makes criminals out of law-abiding citizens.
    ù And it g es against everything our country was founded upon.
    go -
    I'm a historian. T"he essay I've written and that is being released today explores
    attitudes about smoking in the context of Prohibition.
    It's a natural extension of my work on the book Drinking in America, which was the
    source for many of the parallels in the essay.
    Let me point out that I'm not here to defend the tobacco industry or smoking. My
    work only addresses one aspect of the debate. But I think it's a big one, with big
    implications for society.
    In my research, I found striking parallels between society's views on drinking then
    and how we view smoking now. Drinkers became scorned then, just as smokers are
    becominc, social outcasts today.
    When you look at it from a distance, you realize that America isn't so far from
    making many of the same mistakes it made in 1920.
    I won't say history is destined to repeat itself - at least not yet. But the risk-free
    society we seem bent on creating today looks a lot like a variant on the temperance
    movement's "perfectionism."
    I guess we haven't learned our lesson about trying to create a moralLy purified
    society, free of all vices.
    Anti-smokers are pushing de facto prohibition of smoking. That may be a rash thing
    to say, but I think the evidence is clear.
    It might take the form of taxes or restrictive local legislation.
    0 It might come from obsessive government non-smoking regulations-
    Or it might be from the classification of tobacco as a drug, which the Food &
    Dnig Administration currently advocates. CD
    Now, I think only extremists would call for outright tobacco prohibition.
    C:)
    But if you compare the temperance movement's evolution with the mushrooming C:::-
    legislation that's dramatically limited smoking in recent years, you have to conclude that C7%
    we're on the way to at least a "backdoor" prohibition. co
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    2
    Consider these parallels:
    Just as drinking was "demonized" by the Temperance Movement, smoking is seen by
    many as socially unacceptable. Smokers have replaced drinkers as the primary targets of
    reforming wrath. Ile middle-ground for debate is eroding, just as it did leading up
    to
    Prohibition.
    This new national campaign to correct what health officials call an "epidemic of
    obesity" in America reminds me of the "perfectionist" strain that marked Temperance
    propaganda.
    Drh3ldng greatly declined before Prohibition. So has the number of smokers over the
    past decade. In fact, reformers may have already won the battle for public opinion on
    smoking.
    So is it good social policy to implement government-backed, strong-arm measures on
    top of such success?
    When a previous Surgeon General called for a "a smoke-free America by the year
    2000," did he borrow from Ira Landrith the Anti-Saloon League lecturer who once predicted
    a "saloonless nation by 1920?"
    Reformers of the 1990s, just like the dry crowd three quarters of a century ago, have
    gone beyond warning about the products. Now they claim manufacrurers; deliberately
    endanger public health through advertising and marketing.
    Attempts to regulate tobacco out of existence have failed before. Between 1895 and
    1897, three states banned sales of cigarettes and cigarette papers. Nine others had joined
    them by 1909. But all of them later abandoned the legislation for lack of popular support.
    When you think about it, more than just tobacco is at stake today. Sun tans and junk
    foods - any risky behaviors - are under the gun as well.
    And just a month ago the behavior police went after farty foods again, launching a
    campaign to wipe out obesity. A Yale professor has even suggested adding a fat tax to
    certain foods.
    Prohibition taught us that America was a diverse and plural culture by the 1920s. 'We
    couldn't be confined to one moral outlook. That's even more the case today, and yet the
    modem temperance movement persists.
    The truth is, reformers have already won the battle for public opinion on smoking.
    Just as drinking declined well before Prohibition, tens of millions of smokers have already
    quit without help from the government or anyone else.
    So is it good social policy to have government. intrude on top of the big changes that
    ha~e already taken place?
    Do we really need to suffer the terrible social consequences of prohibition to bring
    about moderation and accommodation?
    Do we really need to demonize smokers the way drinkers were? At dinner parties
    and in office building doorways, smokers are already the huddled outcasts. How much
    farther do we need to go?
    Do we want our already strapped state governments putting scarce resources into
    enforcement efforts that will do little to reduce smoking? After all, nobody was happier than
    most state a0vemors when Prohibition was repealed. Cr*I
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    The answer is no.
    IIQ
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    3
    Remember, drinking wasn't the issue that caused Prohibition to fail. The social
    issues, the economic and political consequences, the infringement on too many personal
    freedoms, all contributed to repeal in 1933.
    Even long-standing opponents of smoking agree that you can't control it with
    prohibition, "backdoor' or otherwise.
    Dr. David C. Lewis, editor of Brown University's Digesi of Addiction Theory and
    Application, has said, quote, "Our challenge is to find ways to preserve public health without
    resorting to failed prohibition policies," end quote.
    I think my research proves as much. I didn't set out to argue that Americans can't
    ban something they find objectionable. My point is that if they do, they should do it with
    their eyes wide open, with the consequences clearly in mind.
    The message behind this is all too clear. Believing we can simply ban certain
    behavior for the good of everyone is a big-hearied, but wrong-minded concept. It should
    stay buried with Prohibition.
    But if we continue to let this attitude of intolerance mushroom, we may well be
    misleading ourselves down the same path toward Prohibition, but this time through the back
    door.
    CrI
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    BATCo document for Legal Services : Health Canada 19 October 1999

    




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    BATCo document for Legal Services : Health Canada 19 October 1999