No one with any sense is calling for a constitutional amendment against smoking. But prohibition doesn't require such a drastic step. In 1920, when the nation voted for Prohibition, the majority of districts in America were already dry. Restrictions on advertising, increasing bans on smoking, FDA efforts to regulate tobacco products, assaults on the tobacco industry, and abuses heaped on smokers all have the ring of the old crusade against Demon Rum. Prohibition has never been just about drinking or smoking.
Most reformers have wider social agendas.
And the risk-free society some seem bent on creating today looks a lot like the perfectionist idealism of a century and more ago. The same is true today, despite evidence that intrusive legal remedies are unnecessary. Drinking declined before Prohibition. Under the impact of temperance education, millions of Americans voluntarily gave up the bottle well before the first dry laws. Yet anti-liquor crusaders drove on, unwilling to tolerate any drinking.