This isn’t directly related to the points raised in the post or in any of the top-level comments so far, but I can’t help but wonder: would efforts to quash tobacco go any better than efforts to quash illegal drugs? Is the crux of the matter really whether a drug is net harmful — if it is, try to abolish, if it isn’t, leave it alone? What about considering the most effective forms of harm reduction?
That’s certainly a relevant question, and I think some of it would depend on the contours of the attempting quashing. It’s quite plausible—maybe even probable—that some combination of demand reduction (without outright banning), harm reduction, and other softer techniques would achieve superior results as a practical matter.
That being said, the volume of tobacco consumed by an active smoker (e.g., a pack a day) is many times greater in volume of (e.g.) street opioids where even 2 mg of fentanyl can be a fatal dose. There are about 425MM pounds of tobacco harvested in the US on about 200K acres. I’d expect the volume involved to make smuggling enough tobacco-leaf products significantly more challenging than it is for most drugs. (Or alcohol, which can be produced quite easily using basic equipment.) And so a ban on tobacco leaf might stand a better chance than the median drug ban. On the other hand, it may not be particularly hard to synthesize and smuggle nicotine itself.
Another possible difference might be how society manages addiction in this hypothetical new world. There’s already broad acceptance for treating nicotine addiction as a health problem that warrants professional treatment. If there were a safe, legal, inexpensive way for people with nicotine dependence to get treatment (including nicotine replacement therapy) in a post-quash world, that would take a lot of the wind out of the sails of the black market.
There are not too many case studies to look at here, but in Bhutan, their 2010 ban on the importation and sale of all tobacco products (which was coupled with government counseling and treatment to facilitate cessation) proved controversial and difficult to enforce in the face of large-scale smuggling and was eventually scaled back in 2021.
In 1633, Murad IV banned all tobacco in the Ottoman Empire—the policy was reversed by his successor 10-15 years later
The longest ban in history was implemented in Muscovy Russia in 1634 and lasted just over fifty years until Peter the Great repealed it
A smoke-free generation law similar to what one SMA incubatee has argued for was passed in New Zealand in 2022 and repealed less than two years later
Jurisdictions where cigarettes are currently taxed higher than most of the market will bear, or where noncombustible products are banned, also offer some evidence about the feasibility of keeping smuggling down:
A study examining littered cigarette packs in New York City found less than 20% of them had tax stamps showing they were legally sold
Seizures of e-cigarettes in Brazil, where vaping is completely banned, have been growing since 2019 and reached 1.3 million units in 2023
Keeping a ban in place for a median of ~10 years (based on the four mostly historical examples you cited) strikes me as a pretty successful failure. There are reasons to have some skepticism about a ban, but I don’t see this as one of them.
This isn’t directly related to the points raised in the post or in any of the top-level comments so far, but I can’t help but wonder: would efforts to quash tobacco go any better than efforts to quash illegal drugs? Is the crux of the matter really whether a drug is net harmful — if it is, try to abolish, if it isn’t, leave it alone? What about considering the most effective forms of harm reduction?
Yes I find it bizarre that many people seem to be simultaneously opposed to the War on Drugs and also support extending it to a new drug.
That’s certainly a relevant question, and I think some of it would depend on the contours of the attempting quashing. It’s quite plausible—maybe even probable—that some combination of demand reduction (without outright banning), harm reduction, and other softer techniques would achieve superior results as a practical matter.
That being said, the volume of tobacco consumed by an active smoker (e.g., a pack a day) is many times greater in volume of (e.g.) street opioids where even 2 mg of fentanyl can be a fatal dose. There are about 425MM pounds of tobacco harvested in the US on about 200K acres. I’d expect the volume involved to make smuggling enough tobacco-leaf products significantly more challenging than it is for most drugs. (Or alcohol, which can be produced quite easily using basic equipment.) And so a ban on tobacco leaf might stand a better chance than the median drug ban. On the other hand, it may not be particularly hard to synthesize and smuggle nicotine itself.
Another possible difference might be how society manages addiction in this hypothetical new world. There’s already broad acceptance for treating nicotine addiction as a health problem that warrants professional treatment. If there were a safe, legal, inexpensive way for people with nicotine dependence to get treatment (including nicotine replacement therapy) in a post-quash world, that would take a lot of the wind out of the sails of the black market.
There are not too many case studies to look at here, but in Bhutan, their 2010 ban on the importation and sale of all tobacco products (which was coupled with government counseling and treatment to facilitate cessation) proved controversial and difficult to enforce in the face of large-scale smuggling and was eventually scaled back in 2021.
It seems to me there’s a lot of available data to help make an informed guess of the likelihood of success of the kind of measure SMA advocates for.
Tobacco bans are almost as old as the global tobacco trade itself, and all of them have been eventually reversed. Some examples beyond that of Bhutan:
A 17th century ban on tobacco in Japan lasted less than a decade
In 1633, Murad IV banned all tobacco in the Ottoman Empire—the policy was reversed by his successor 10-15 years later
The longest ban in history was implemented in Muscovy Russia in 1634 and lasted just over fifty years until Peter the Great repealed it
A smoke-free generation law similar to what one SMA incubatee has argued for was passed in New Zealand in 2022 and repealed less than two years later
Jurisdictions where cigarettes are currently taxed higher than most of the market will bear, or where noncombustible products are banned, also offer some evidence about the feasibility of keeping smuggling down:
A study examining littered cigarette packs in New York City found less than 20% of them had tax stamps showing they were legally sold
Seizures of e-cigarettes in Brazil, where vaping is completely banned, have been growing since 2019 and reached 1.3 million units in 2023
El Colegio de México estimates about 5 million daily vapers in a country whose vape ban is in the constitution
Reuters estimates the size of the current illegal vape market in the USA at about $2.4 billion
Keeping a ban in place for a median of ~10 years (based on the four mostly historical examples you cited) strikes me as a pretty successful failure. There are reasons to have some skepticism about a ban, but I don’t see this as one of them.