TO PROHIBIT TOBACCO.

Northern Advocate, 17 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 engineered the prohibition amendment to the Americavi Consttution started the drive that >s 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 the army, contribute to the success of the actual combatant groups at the front, there are four well-defined forces at work in the campaign against My Lady Nicotine. They are: 1. The Anti-Cigarette League, with headquarters in Chicago, of which Lucy Page 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 and 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 York, 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. The work which is going on is very similar to the work which was undertaken by the prohibition forces against the use 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. The first legislative attempts will centre in an effort to secure anticigarette legislation in those States which already have such laws, but where they are a "dead letter." OPENING BATTLE. The legislative attacks has started in Oregon, where, on September 17, there was filed with the Secretary of State of Oregon, by D. E. Frost, of Oregon City, an initiative petition covering the prohibition of "the sale, uge, and 1 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 be voted upon by the people of Oregon in the general elections of November, 1920. Predictions of its overwhelming defeat are not worrying the anti-cigar-ette forces. They regard it merely as an entering wedge.

Oregon has been selected because it has no interest in tobacco-growing, and because it is regarded as one of the best fields for the start of the movement.

The attempt to secure a drastic anti-cigarette law for Oregon f follows the revival of enforcement of the anti-cigarette 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 put up the price of 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 °f sight, but selling them just the same.

Arkansas, Iowa ( Kansas, North Dakota, and Termesse have anti-cigar-ette laws; ,1 Washington, Wisconsin, Indiana, Oklahoma, and Minnesota had anti-cigarette laws, but repealed them; and South Dakota declared unconstitutional its anticigarette law.