The US Food and Drug Administration has plainly learnt the lessons of the 1920s. The Volstead Act was passed in 1919 to ban the manufacture and consumption of alcoholic beverages. It was in place for 14 years, and it didn’t work. Prohibition was wildly unpopular, Americans continued to find drink somewhere and it fuelled the rise of criminal organisations such as the Mafia.
The FDA’s attempt, announced last Friday, to limit the use of nicotine is more measured. It talks of a “multi-year road plan” which analysts reckon could take as much as a decade to be implemented. It is the start of a long consultation process. There are measures to increase the number of so-called next generation products, vaping and “heat not burn” cigarettes