When Smoking was a Crime.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXVII, Issue XIII, 28 September 1901, Page 595

When Smoking was a Crime.

It is one of the curiosities of oldtime legislation that the use of tobacco was in early colonial days regarded as far more injurious, degrading and sinful than intoxicating liquors. Both the use and the planting of the weed were forbidden, the cultivation of it being permitted only in small quantities, “for mere necessitie, for physick. for preservation of the health, and that the same be taken privately by ancient men.'' But the ‘•creature called tobacco” seemed to have an indestructible life. Landlords were ordered not to ‘‘suffer anv tobaeco to be taken into their houses” on penalty of a fine to the “victualler” and another to “the party that takes it.” The laws were constantly altered and enforced, and still tobacco was grown and was smoked. No one could take it “publicquely” nor in his own house or anywhere else before strangers. Two men were forbidden to smoke together. No one could smoke within two miles of the meet-ing-house on the Sabbath Day. There were wicked backsliders who were eaught smoking around the corner of the meeting-house, and others on the street, and they were fined and set in the stocks and in cages. Until within a few years ago there were New England towns where tobacco smoking in the streets was prohibited, and innocent cigarette-loving travellers were astonished at being requested to cease smoking. Mr Drake wrote in 1886 that be knew men. then living, who had had to plead guilty or not guilty in a Boston police court for smoking in the streets of Boston. Tn Connecticut in early days a great indulgence was permitted to travellers—a man could smoke once during a journey of ten miles.