I got out before the weather hit, and have a spare moment. Professor Blanchard below discusses puritanism and tobacco. As I believe I have noted on this blog before, in Tocqueville's discussion of the many onerous laws of Colonial era Puritans, he concludes that they were so crazy that they even tried to outlaw tobacco.
As Ken points out, by any measure alcohol is far more of a public nuisance than tobacco. But everybody drinks while few smoke. This makes it politically easy to go after the smokers rather than the drinkers.
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