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The proposal by Queensland Minister Steve Dickson to ban smoking is idiotic in the extreme.

It is a popular and frustrating refrain of intelligent people – those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Minister Dickson obviously does not know about the American experience of prohibition.

If you ban something like smoking all you are doing is handing all the revenue over to organised crime. People will still smoke. It will be a serious act of rebellion and become cool again. Not having to pay taxes will make it cheaper too.

A much broader range of people will start to have exposure to organised crime. The same people who sell cigarettes probably sell other drugs as well. With more money to be made there will be more crime.

Banning smoking is a gift to organised crime.

You can think like Minister Dickson and say the government are drug dealers who profit from people’s misery. This is a short sighted and emotional way of looking at it. There is a great deal of fear and emotion mixed up in the so-called war against drugs.

Yes, governments around Australia do receive a hell of a lot of revenue from cigarette taxes. I would much rather governments, legitimate corporations and shopkeepers receive the profits from cigarettes than criminals.

Drug abuse is a very complex problem. Solutions need to be developed using intelligence not emotion. The smoking problem is a balancing act between minimising the number of people taking up smoking, using the taxes raised to help combat the problem and not putting the taxes up so high that it encourages a black market to develop.

Banning smoking does none of these.

Instead of banning smoking they should be considering legalising recreational drugs. Almost all of the points that I have made earlier can be made about recreational drugs.

Wouldn’t you rather people be able to buy marijuana or ecstasy from a legitimate shop run by a legitimate shopkeeper? They would know exactly what they are getting with a greatly reduced chance of poisoning or overdose. The profits could be heavily taxed with a lot more money being put into treatment programs and advertising to discourage drug use.

There would be less people in prison and less crime and probably less people using drugs.

This is not about condoning drug use. It is about taking emotion out of the war against drugs. Solutions require intelligence and logic not a sound bite designed to get your face on the news.