It is doubtful that even a smoking rate of 0.01% would satisfy them. For the moral entrepreneur, the only tolerable rate of consumption is zero and surely nobody imagined that the stated goal of a “tobacco-free world” could be achieved by persuasion alone. The lurch towards prohibition should therefore not be surprising. And yet their squeamishness about using the P word, and the scramble to find a more friendly-sounding term, would not be necessary if these advocates believed that prohibition was a noble goal. They know they are naughty boys and girls, these crusaders, and they hope the public will be fooled if they coin new terms for their discredited ideology of suppression.Do go read the whole piece if you haven't already but it's interesting that, in the same week, the Harm Reduction Journal produced a critique of Olympics anti-doping policies containing a quote which is extremely timely under the circumstances.
50 years of ‘war on drugs’ have had little effect on this prevalence but have had many negative consequences. As Room and Reuters note:Why, oh why, do advocates for tobacco prohibition think they have the silver bullet for avoiding the same overwhelmingly destructive outcomes when tobacco use is so massively larger than that of drugs?
“The system’s emphasis on criminalisation of drug use has contributed to the spread of HIV, increased imprisonment for minor offences, encouraged nation states to adopt punitive policies (including executions, extra-judicial killings, imprisonment as a form of treatment, and widespread violations of UN-recognised human rights of drug users), and impaired the collection of data on the extent of use and harm of illicit drugs, all of which have caused harm to drug users and their families”.
These people are either extremely dangerous, or mind-bogglingly stupid. Or, more realistically, both.
