Prohibition Cages People, Kills, And Ruins Lives
As I've said before, the government has no right to tell adult citizens what they can and cannot put in their bodies.

On a related note, there's a worthwhile long read at Spiked by Christopher Snowdon on how we keep unlearning the lessons of Prohibition -- subtitle: "A hundred years on, and some people still think curtailing citizens' everyday freedom is a good thing":

Today, alcohol prohibition lives on in the Islamic world and in parts of India, where the kind of mass poisonings that were once common in the US continue to occur. Illegal hooch killed at least 100 people in Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh last February. Two weeks later, moonshine killed 150 people and hospitalised 200 more in northeast India. Prohibitionists might argue that you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs, but where is the omelette?

The simple lesson to learn from such 'noble' experiments is that if you try to prohibit activities, which are none of the government's business and are regarded as perfectly acceptable by a significant section of society, you cause more damage than if you left them alone. Laws that protect people and their property command general respect. Laws that seek to stamp out private behaviour, the consequences of which can be avoided by those who do not share a taste for it, neither deserve nor receive respect (the word 'scofflaw' was coined during prohibition to describe the millions who refused to comply).

Regrettably, not everyone has learnt the lesson. Alcohol is under no imminent threat of prohibition in the Western world, but ad hoc bans continue to appeal to both the conservative right and the progressive left. The stigma of prohibition remains strong enough for modern-day prohibitionists to steer away from the word, but the objective remains the same. Some anti-tobacco extremists have borrowed the old prohibitionist trick of using the word 'abolition' to invoke the genuinely noble cause of ending slavery. Others employ the euphemism 'endgame' to describe the looming, inevitable ban on cigarettes. Last year, the British government set a target of going 'smoke-free' by 2030. 'Smoke-free' used to mean that smoking was banned indoors. It now means the total eradication of combustible tobacco. It is difficult to see how this could be attempted without draconian laws.

Beverly Hills is set to become the first place in America since the days of the Anti-Cigarette League to ban the sale of all tobacco products. The tiny kingdom of Bhutan banned tobacco sales in 2004, with predictable consequences. When the ban was passed, an editorial in the Lancet said: 'That is what we call progress.' The prevalence of tobacco-use has risen from nine per cent to 25 per cent since its prohibition began. A study published in 2011 found 'a thriving black market and significant and increasing tobacco smuggling'. Who could have seen that coming?

This is right in keeping with Jack Brehm's research on "psychological reactance." Try to take away someone's freedom -- tell them they can't do something -- and they will be hellbent to do exactly that thing.