PROHIBITING TOBACCO WILL CAUSE A DISASTER

I respond to Dave Peyton's column, "Prohibition has not worked," in the
Oct. 18 Daily Mail.

We should all pray that our lunatic prohibitionists do not succeed in
outlawing tobacco, not because there's anything good about tobacco use, but
because of the profound evils that prohibition always brings.

If tobacco is banned, this will instantly create the largest criminal black
market in history. Overnight, 25 percent of the citizenry will become outlaws.

Cigarettes will sell for $100-plus a pack, and a new crime wave will ensue
as tobacco addicts rob, burglarize and swindle the cash needed to pay
prohibition-inflated prices. Violent criminal gangs will immediately emerge
vying for control of the tobacco bonanza created by ignorant drug crusaders.

Prohibiting tobacco will cause a disaster greater than the results of alcohol Prohibition and the drug war combined.

The secret to reducing the harm from genuinely dangerous products like
tobacco is education, not punishment and condemnation. Education has done
more to reduce the number of smokers and drunk drivers than any law could
possibly do. (Cigarettes are routinely smuggled into prisons where smoking
is banned.) Education is much cheaper than a legal ban and does not impose
the immense burdens that prohibition does.

It's long past time to abandon prohibitionist concepts that have never
worked for anything, anywhere, anytime.

Redford Givens,
San Francisco, Calif.