Opinion: Legislating morality doesn't work

Today’s topic is sin. I’ll try not to get preachy about it.

There’s a long list of habit-forming vices that Americans have enjoyed, condemned, regulated and even outlawed over time, but today we’ll consider four in particular — tobacco, alcohol, marijuana and gambling. Our U.S. government has spent a lot of time and effort trying to control each, with some of the biggest changes having occurred over the last half-century.

Used to be, a lot of communities relegated drinking, pot smoking and betting to the shadows, while cigarette smoking was mainstream. Now, it’s the other way around.

Fifty years ago, where I was growing up, you had to cross the county line (or find a local moonshiner or bootlegger) to get your booze. Plus, there were the “blue laws” — which outlawed the sale of alcohol on Sundays — to protect the Sabbath and keep it holy. Nowadays, even the counties that remain “dry” are at least damp, allowing booze to be served with special licenses, while the blue laws tend to go only until noon on Sunday, instead of all day.

Also in the old days, pot was a Schedule 1 narcotic that could get you prison time just for having some on your person. It’s still Schedule 1, but states have been bucking such antiquated federal laws and created a regulatory approach to cannabis. New Mexico just became the 18th state to legalize recreational pot use, while it remains totally illegal in only five states now.

It wasn’t so long ago that gambling was a back-alley form of entertainment — a backroom poker game, sports betting in the shadows, a numbers racket working out of otherwise-legitimate establishments.

The feds and other authorities clamped down on gambling after World War II, but Nevada bucked the trend and gave rise to Las Vegas, which became just about the only place around where one could gamble openly in the U.S. Then, in 1977, New Jersey decided to legalize casino gambling in Atlantic City, and a couple years later the Seminole Tribe opened the first reservation-based casino. Then the floodgates opened.

Now, legalized gambling is just about everywhere, and is often touted as a great way to support schools (see the New Mexico Lottery, among many state lotteries that funnel money into their educational programs).

Alcohol, marijuana and gambling have certainly moved more into the mainstream, but smoking has gone the other way. Used to be, everybody smoked cigarettes wherever they wanted. I remember our family doctor making house calls in the 1960s, puffing his cigarette while checking us kids out, one at a time in our front room.

Now, smoking has been regulated to the outdoors — and even there it’s restricted — due to the realization that second-hand smoke is also a health hazard.

America’s history is replete with efforts to curb bad habits and addictions, and mostly those efforts ended in failures. Prohibition of alcohol, which lasted from 1920 to 1933, is the most glaring example of how simply outlawing a vice doesn’t work. It didn’t stop alcohol consumption, it sent it underground, and that led to a dramatic rise in organized crime. Ditto for the war on drugs.

Legislating morality, as it turns out, doesn’t work.

Tom McDonald is editor of the New Mexico Community News Exchange. Contact him at:

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