Er, they tried banning alcohol, and Prohibition spawned the greatest period of widespread contempt for the law in the history of the republic. If revenue were the only motivation for public policy, soft drugs would have been legalized twenty years ago.

I think it's the Protestant Ethic at work.

BigBadTea, et al, the government already has standards for food safety, opening hours, liquor service, etc. Smoking is just another aspect. I have no problem with bars/restaurants that allow smoking as long as they are properly ventilated (bet you most places would rather ban smoking than invest in proper air filtration systems) and nonsmoking tables/sections are not relegated to the most undesirable corner of the room.
However, I've yet to be in a cafe or restaurant in Italy that is half as smokey as the average British pub. Also, I can't believe how many British kids smoke. Yesterday I rode the bus here in Maidenhead with several young teenagers coming back from school, all moaning that they hadn't had a cigarette since lunchtime. And one of them complained bitterly about her strict mother, saying mum threatened to give her Ipod to a charity shop if she caught her daughter smoking before the age of *fifteen.* Her mates agreed that was really cruel.

Robesspiere,

The reason alcohol prohibition was reversed/a failure is that the mob/mafia was making so much money off of it & that the gov't wasn't getting their share. Do you realize how much money the gov't makes from taxing alcohol & tobacco? What about the money they make from their legalized gambling, aka lotteries? If I owned a bar/restaurant, I couldn't have a slot machine but the gov't can, is that fair?

I always thought that Prohibiton was first instituted, and then repealed, by amendments to the Constitution. It might have been the Eighteenth and Twenty-first Amendments, but I'm not sure. This process, I was taught, requires two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress and ratification by the legislatures of three-fourths of the states.

I didn't realize it was to raise tax revenues.