In 1969, Denmark became the first country to legalize pictorial and audiovisual pornography, so it is acutely painful to see its government take a new puritanical turn.

The Health Ministry has already set the goal of raising the alcohol drinking age from 16 to 18. And last month, Denmark’s health minister announced plans to ban the sale of tobacco and nicotine products to anyone born after 2010. This way, the Health Ministry hopes to gradually phase out the use of all tobacco and nicotine products in the country. The Health Ministry took this action to address the 13,600 annual deaths from smoking-related cancer in the country.

Currently, such sales are banned for people under age 18. A Danish government survey found 31 percent of 15- to 29-year-olds smoke. This means that the black market is already serving a significant number of 15- to 18-year-olds. Does the Health Ministry think banning the sale of tobacco products to people born any time after 2010 will not cause a surge in underground sales—and all the side effects (from adulterated tobacco products to violent crime) that entails?

Not surprisingly, the Danish Health Ministry finds that two-thirds of 18- to 34-year-olds are OK with the proposed ban. They were all born before 2010.

While it was the first country to legalize porn, Denmark was not the first country to phase in tobacco prohibition. New Zealand announced last year that, beginning in 2022, it plans to ban the sale of tobacco products to anyone born prior to 2008 and to gradually raise the minimum age for adults to buy tobacco products every year beginning in 2023.

It’s one thing to ban the sale of certain products to minors and another to prohibit sales to adults. Prohibition violates adults’ right to ingest or otherwise consume into their bodies whatever they choose, assuming any risk that comes with it. Prohibition is also a money maker for black marketeers as well as a jobs program for the law enforcement industry required to enforce it.

H.L. Mencken humorously defined puritanism as “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” Putting puritanism into policy has not-so-humorous consequences.