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Governments do not ban smoking altogether, because to do so would cut off a lucrative source of income. Nevertheless, in the United States today, smoking is widely condemned. Smokers must now indulge their habit like segregated pariahs and pay a premium price to engage in an activity that was once widespread, using a product that was once rather cheap. The premium price is a result of a high "sin tax" that funds health-centered campaigns, at once condemning a product as deadly but relying on its continued use for additional revenue.

This ambivalent attitude towards tobacco is nothing new. In 17th century England, for example, the government put an extremely high tax on imported tobacco. The result was an increase in smuggling, so the government lowered the tax to a level where smokers would not cut the government out of the tax flow. By 1619, King James I, needing the income during a period when he was becoming increasingly unpopular, cornered the clay pipe market during a time when 40,000 pounds of tobacco were arriving annually from Virginia.

Ironically, King James was also the chief British critic of tobacco smoking. In 1604, in his "Counterblaste to Tobacco," he wrote:

"Have you not reason then to be ashamed, and to forbear this filthy novelty? In your abuse thereof sinning against God, harming yourselves in person and taking thereby the marks of vanity upon you A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and the black stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless." [1]

Other European explorers, including Columbus during his first voyage, saw Native Americans using tobacco. The first Spanish missionaries, for example, tried to stop native tobacco use, associating smoking with pagan religious practices. When tobacco reached Europe in the late 1500's, some physicians thought smoking might cure diseases of the lungs and internal organs. One writer, Sir Francis Bacon noted in 1610 that smokers had a difficult time breaking the habit. Anti-smoking advocates back then also had the church on their side. Throughout Europe, the Christian clergy denounced smoking as an immoral practice. When smoking spread to the Ottoman Empire, Muslim clerics also condemned it as contrary to Islamic beliefs.

From the pious James I in 17th Century England, as well as other European governments who would follow suit, through modern times governments both tax and regulate tobacco as our modern "sin tax." In the United States we also have the rather ridiculous spectacle of tobacco companies paying for adds, which if successful, would put them out of business.

So the controversy about tobacco smoking is not new. Neither is the seemingly ambivalent and illogical attitude of cash-strapped governments towards taxing a product that is a dangerous public health risk. Of course, there are also special interests - tobacco growers and companies who play a role in financing the expensive business of getting politicians reelected.

[1] A Counterblaste to Tobacco [1604], reprinted by the Rodale Press, London, 1954, p. 36

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