A Total History of Bans on Smoking Tobacco
Michael Martin, when announcing his unyielding ban on smoking, asserted Ireland was the first country to initiate such extensive actions to interdict tobacco. Like other claims he made, he was utterly wrong.
History has suffered bans and prohibitions of smoking tobacco instilled by tyrants and totalitarian dictatorships, all of which have entered and exited in due course. Even before Ireland’s suppressive smoking statutes, the populace of Europe suffered the no smoking laws of the infamous Third Reich, first introduced by decree of the Nazi’s in the late thirties.