Technically, the Food and Drug Administration's new proposal "to lower nicotine in cigarettes to minimally or non-addictive levels" isn't an exercise in prohibition. Cigarettes would still remain available—but they wouldn't be the product that smokers had in mind. Instead, they'd be a substitute foisted on them by their self-identified betters.

This sort of not-quite prohibition isn't new, and it's guaranteed to have very familiar consequences.