TO PROHIBIT TOBACCO.

Hokitika Guardian, 9 January 1920, Page 4

TO PROHIBIT TOBACCO.

CAMPAIGN IN AMERICA,

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 11

Is prohibition of tobacco to follow prohibition of alcohol?. Have the forces which engineering the prohibition amendment to the American Constitution started the drive that is to end in the suppression of tobacco in America? An unbiased investigation into the influences and forces at work leads to the conclusion that there is a well-defined campaign under way, backed in a large part by the forces which backed prohibition of the liquor traffic, which has for its ultimate object the prohibition of the sale and use of tobacco in every form.

Besides the many subsidiary groups and organisations, which, like the auxiliary branches of an army, contribute to the success of the actual combatant groups at the front, there are four welldefined forces at work in the campaign against My Lady Nicotine. They are: 1. The Anti-Cigarette League, with headquarters in Chicago, of which Lucy ]?age Gaston is the president, and which plans to secure 10,000,000 members in the United States.

2. The Temperance and Moral Board of the Methodist Episcopal Church, headed by Dr Clarence True Wilson, with headquarters in Washington, D.C., 3. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union. 4 The “Committee of Fifty,” headed by Dr Alexander Lambert, of New Yor, and including -some of the most prominent physicians and scientists in the United States, which is making a study of the effects of nicotine on the human system.

There is no present intention on the part of the anti-tobacco forces to work for a constitutional amendment to prohibit tobacco. Tlie work which is going on is very similar to the work which was undertaken by the prohibition forces against the uso of liquor in the first stages of its campaign. It consists of education, agitation, publicity, directed against tobacco, and particularly at the present time against the cigarette. Tlio first legislative attempts will centre in an effort to secure anticigaretto legislation in the States where the chances of success are best, and also to secure the enforcement of anti-cigarette legislation in those States which already have , such laws, but where'thev arc a “dead letter.” OPENING BATTLE.

The legislative attack has started in 'Oregon, where, on September 17th, there was filed with the Secretary of State or Oregon, by D. E’. Frost, of Oregon City, an initiative petition covering the prohibition of “the sale, use, and possession of cigarettes” in Oregon. Attorney-General Brown of Oregon, has prepared the ballot title- for this Anti-Cigarette Bill, and if it receives a sufficient number of signatures—over 10,000 —it will he voted upon by the people of Oregon in tho general election >of November 1920. Predictions of its overwhelming defeat are not worrying the anti-cigarette forces. They regard it merely as an entering wedgo. Oregon has been selected because it has no interest in tobacco growing, and because it is regarded as one of tho best fields for the start of the movement.

Tlie attempt to secure a drastic anticigarette law for Oregon follows the revival of enforcement of the anticigarette law in North Dakota. For years the law there has been a dead letter, but last May officials began to put life into the law, and dealers were advised that they would be given a certain length of time in which to dispose of stocks of cigarettes on hand, after which time the law would be strictly enforced. Many dealers ceased selling (cigarettes altogether; others pub up the price 5 cents a package to recompense them for the risk they were taking. The general practice is to evade the law by keeping the cigarettes out of sight, but selling them just the same. Arkansas, lowa, Kansas, North Dakota, and Tennessee have anti-cigarette laws; Washington, Wisconsin, Indiana, 'Oklahoma., Nebraska., and Minnesota had anti-cigarette laws, but repealed them; aud South Dakota declared unconstitutional its anti-cigarette law.