The prohibition of alcohol in the USA was a notorious fiasco.
The War on Drugs has been a deadly failure.
Bans on alternative nicotine products keep people smoking cigarettes.
Attempts to suppress legal highs result in more drugs hitting the market.
Prohibition doesn't work but the world is filled with prohibitionists. Why?

Christopher Snowdon's new history of prohibitions is a panoramic study of how bans begin, who instigates them and why they fail. It is a story of moral panics, vested interests and popular hysteria, driven by people who believe that utopia is only ever...