Free Republic

This week, the World Health Organisation (WHO) trumpeted the supposed benefits of its new anti-alcohol initiative. In a press release on the 23rd February, the taxpayer-funded so-called public health organization announced that “if countries of the WHO European Region were to introduce a minimum level of 15% tax on the retail price per unit of alcohol, regardless of the type of alcoholic beverage, it would save 133,000 lives each year.” The reduction in deaths from increased taxation comes courtesy of modelling from the WHO’s Non-Communicable Diseases Advisory Council working group. Needless to say, the conclusions are debatable. It is common...

As the First World War came to an end, the U.S. federal government passed the 18th Amendment banning the sale and consumption of alcohol. Seeing this as a permanent and irreversible victory, anti-alcohol campaigners were not slow to identify a new target…nicotine. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union financed a book entitled Nicotine Next and temperance preacher Billy Sunday declared that “Prohibition is won, now for tobacco”. History shows Prohibition was a disaster for the United States. After 13 years of unnecessary social upheaval, economic damage, and bloodshed, the 18th Amendment was finally repealed to the relief and delight of public...