WI: Temperance movement includes tobacco from the start?

The temperance movement was a major force in the late 19th century/early 20th century in some countries, culminating in Prohibition in the US. Though famous for restricting and banning alcohol, some temperance activists also campaigned against tobacco. After the 18th Amendment was passed, one activist proclaimed that "tobacco was next". And indeed, in many states they managed to pass various bans on the sales of tobacco products, which unfortunately were short lived as this part of the temperance movement died out during the 1920s (speaking of the US).

So what if alcohol was always lumped in with tobacco? The Victorian era had an anti-tobacco movement, mainly based in Victorian morality but also inadvertantly in science.

Speaking of the US, I think it would be an issue in states like North Carolina and Tennessee where the tobacco industry was huge. For instance, even though Tennessee had a huge alcohol industry (Jack Daniels is the most famous of the remnants of it), it was all banned even before Prohibition by the state legislature. If the 18th Amendment had included tobacco products, would the amendment have been passed at all, with the struggle it might've faced in some states? Would, as I have suspected, the Temperance movement been hindered by the association with the early anti-tobacco movement? I think it would keep the Prohibition Party as a major force slightly longer, but...
 
Add in a racist, ethnic-centric, cultural bias and you will have more success prohibiting tobacco.
Which group of recent immigrants smoked the most?
Which religious group smoked the most?
Did Northerners still want to ruin the Southern "planter" class?
 
Add in a racist, ethnic-centric, cultural bias and you will have more success prohibiting tobacco.
Which group of recent immigrants smoked the most?
Which religious group smoked the most?
Did Northerners still want to ruin the Southern "planter" class?

The tobacco industry seems to have surprisingly ignored the African American market in the early era. Advertising campaigns for that market didn't start until the Civil Rights era, which you can certainly call a lost opportunity. I don't think the industry would've gone for the African American market hard enough to lead to prohibition of tobacco in general. If it ever looked like their targeting of the African American market (at the height of racist charicatures and the KKK's height of power) was hurting them, they'd try and make a safe retreat. Unless it didn't really matter. It wasn't so much immigrants or minorities smoking that was the problem for OTL prohibitionists, these were people who had a problem with anyone smoking at all.

For any bias, you have at best a classist bias, since before the 1910s, cigarettes were used by lower class people (generally). That decade was when cigarettes managed to be expanded massively in the US. But in 1910, things were still pretty set.

And tobacco farming wasn't just a factor in the South, but also in parts of the North up to Connecticut. And from what I get at, in some places, like Middle Tennessee, where the tobacco grown and processed in barns is to this day processed into cigars and little else, the main production of the cigarette industry (hugely expanding during the age of the temperance activists) was not occurring as much as it was in North Carolina, where it seems to be mainly made into cigarettes. It still didn't stop the tobacco industry from being highly influential (famous senator Howard Baker was involved with the tobacco industry's advocacy).

But overall, I'm just after if the historic tobacco prohibition movement, somewhat lumped in with alcohol prohibition, ended up as part of the temperance movement as a whole. There's huge potential effects on both tobacco policy and lcohol policy, or maybe not at all, thanks to southern states preventing national Prohibition, but allowing state Prohibition or having state laws which allowed certain areas to sell alcohol (as in Tennessee, where Memphis and Nashville were allowed to sell until Prohibition and afterwards local corruption tolerated alcohol sales).
 
https://www.nwhm.org/online-exhibits/progressiveera/wctu.html

" . . . This issue resonated with many women because alcohol consumption often increased the frequency and severity of domestic violence and abuse. In addition, men would sometimes squander limited household finances on alcohol. . . "
If the combo issue of alcohol-tobacco delays or prevents Prohibition, maybe there's an earlier discussion of domestic violence, and maybe earlier shelters for battered women ? ?

It's a damn difficult issue to discuss all the way around.
 

CECBC

Banned
I think it is more because cigarettes don't alter people's behaviour like alcohol does. Nobody blames tobacco for people beating their wives or crashing their cars like with alcohol. It was more of just a dirty habit and the real health effects of smoking weren't that well understood in the 30's like they are nowadays.
 
Until the late 1930s/early 1940s there was very little "science" about the negative effect of tobacco. The anti-tobacco movement was based on morality, and they )disgusting" habit particularly chewing, although clouds of smoke were also decried. IMHO the base of folks involved in tobacco from the small farmer on up will prevent tobacco prohibition - many who were anti-alcohol were smokers. The effects of alcohol - waste of money by drunks, families disrupted, crimes committed under the influence etc were quite obvious, smoking not at all.
 
I think it is more because cigarettes don't alter people's behaviour like alcohol does. Nobody blames tobacco for people beating their wives or crashing their cars like with alcohol. It was more of just a dirty habit and the real health effects of smoking weren't that well understood in the 30's like they are nowadays.

Yeah, it's funny. The negative effects of smoking aren't really experienced on a day-to-day level, UNTIL the big, fatal, diseases kick in, usually years after you started.

Whereas the negative effects of alcohol can be easily discerned right from the beginnning of your drinking career, with the big, fatal diseases being less of a problem for most imbibers.

Speaking as someone who has quit both drinking and smoking, I was much more enthusiastic about dropping the former habit than the latter. Hangovers were basically the reason I quit drinking, and all I had to do was think about a hangover, to decide that I did not wish to indulge. But with smoking, you could always say to yourself "Heck, I enjoy it, and it doesn't SEEM to be hurting me, so why the hell not?"
 
I think it is more because cigarettes don't alter people's behaviour like alcohol does. Nobody blames tobacco for people beating their wives or crashing their cars like with alcohol. It was more of just a dirty habit and the real health effects of smoking weren't that well understood in the 30's like they are nowadays.

That is the big part of why it never happened in OTL, I think. It's so much less visible. But even in the 19th century there were products being marketed which were intended to help people quit smoking. It's really they need to segue into that the people the market for those products was intended for wanted to quit because they will die of lung cancer, heart disease, or other illness because of their tobacco habit.

Until the late 1930s/early 1940s there was very little "science" about the negative effect of tobacco. The anti-tobacco movement was based on morality, and they )disgusting" habit particularly chewing, although clouds of smoke were also decried. IMHO the base of folks involved in tobacco from the small farmer on up will prevent tobacco prohibition - many who were anti-alcohol were smokers. The effects of alcohol - waste of money by drunks, families disrupted, crimes committed under the influence etc were quite obvious, smoking not at all.

Yep, the science that proves tobacco is as bad for you as alcohol (as well as equally addictive) did not exist until then. But the period of 1870 to 1920 had a lot of anti-tobacco material, and even if they didn't have science behind them (even if the claimed to), there were people trying to market products to quit tobacco use. And actually, it wasn't until the early 1950s I believe, since it was mostly a few outliers at that point (including the Nazi anti-tobacco movement which sadly was tarnished by association). It could've been discovered earlier, to make the Nazi anti-tobacco movement just another regional part.

And it's very interesting how during World War I in the US, many of the people involved in temperance (which had included tobacco prohibition to some degree) changed their tune on tobacco when General Pershing called for cigarettes to be included in the rations of soldiers. And then these activists deployed to France and were actively involved in handing out cigarettes to soldiers, and then themselves purchased cigarettes and became addicted. That seems one of the reasons the movement in the US weakened.
 
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