TY  - JOUR
AU  - Alston,Lee J.
AU  - Dupre,Ruth
AU  - Nonnenmacher,Tomas
TI  - Social Reformers and Regulation: The Prohibition of Cigarettes in the U.S. and Canada
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Historical Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 131
PY  - 2000
Y2  - November 2000
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/h0131
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/h0131.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Lee J. Alston
Institutions Program
Institute of Behavioral Science
Department of Economics
University of Colorado at Boulder
Boulder, CO  80309-0483
Tel: 303/492-4257
Fax: 303/492 2151
E-Mail: Lee.Alston@colorado.edu

Tomas Nonnenmacher
Department of Economics
Allegheny College
Meadville PA 16335
E-Mail: tnonnenm@allegheny.edu
AB  - The apogee of anti-smoking legislation in North America was reached early in the last century.  In 1903, the Canadian Parliament passed a resolution prohibiting the manufacture, importation, and sale of cigarettes.  Around the same time, fifteen states in the United States banned the sale of cigarettes and thirty-five states considered prohibitory legislation.  In both the United States and Canada, prohibition was part of a broad political, economic, and social coalition termed the Progressive Movement.  Cigarette prohibition was special interest regulation, though not of the usual narrow neoclassical genre; it was the means by which a group of crusaders sought to alter the behavior of a much larger segment of the population.  The opponents of cigarette regulation were cigarette smokers and the more organized cigarette lobby.  An active Progressive Movement was the necessary condition for generating interest in prohibition, while the anti-prohibition forces played a more significant role later in the legislative process.  The  moral reformers' succeeded when they faced little opposition because few constituents smoked and/or no jobs were at stake because there was no cigarette industry.  In other words, reform is easy when you are preaching to the converted.
ER  -